The Morrigan Effect
by atomicsub927
Summary: A Reimagining of the Systems Alliance, where humans never found the prothean ruins on mars. We don't have access to reality breaking laws of the Mass Effect. We fought tooth and nail for every technology we have. And now we show our true faces as we stand alongside our quarian allies in the First Contact war, and beyond. As Realistic as I can make it and prepare for many cameos.
1. The Ice Hauler Canterbury

_"I had the very special privilege of intelligence gathering during the first contact war so I would get to see our enemy up close. Sometimes I had the chilling feeling that we where fighting ourselves", - _Unknown Intelligence Officer onboard the _SSV Udaloy_

**Water Hauler Canterbury, John Grissom**  
Several hundred light years from earth, a lone ship gently cruised through the massive ring system surrounding a gas giant. Several kilometre wide chunks of ice where crushed, mined and transferred into strong carbon fiber rigging on the walls, while electrolytic separators split the valuable water into oxygen (for use to breathing) and hydrogen which made an excellent fuel source when cryogenically condensed into rocket fuel for atmospheric craft and short range docking pods. Also for use in RCS thrusters.

If you wanted to get filthy rich fast in the Systems Alliance, water mining was probably one of the better ways, as pirates would often neglect hoarding water ice in favour of precious metals like platinum, titanium, gold, silver and other compounds. Asteroid stations built onto the floating space mountains always needed oxygen and hydrogen. Coolant for nuclear and antimatter reactors was one of the largest industries, and oxygen was practically as expensive as gold in certain areas. Generally many stations had large backups of oxygen, and used Lichen based hydroponics tanks to reproduce oxygen, but buying it was more reliable than plant farming. Specially considering the fairly large market for CO2 which could be shipped to planets being terraformed.

In short, Poseidon H2O Sources was a fairly well known company throughout the outer colonies, as it had shown itself to be a reliable source of water. It made good use of its fleet of water haulers, each almost a kilometre long. Don't let the size trick you though, as working on one of these floating freight haulers wasn't glamorous. Many weren't even equipped with FTL drives, as they where energy intensive, and they where basically plasma thrusters attached to giant hangar bays which hosted massive racks to carry the ice, a few high pressure storage tanks to store melted water and oxygen or hydrogen, and a small command deck. Even the _Canterbury_, at almost 897 meters long had a crew of just 89. 9 Command staff, 10 navigational crew, 20 engineers for its severely outdated wormhole drive, and the rest where mercenaries or crewmen who actually worked around the ice. Moving it into the rigging using mechanical claws and drones.

As the ship ignited its plasma thrusters to leave the field, the captain, one James Holden noticed something odd. "XO To the bridge, XO to the bridge". John Grissom, XO of the _Canterbury_ ran in quickly, ensuring he was fully dressed for the former military man. "You wanted to see me sir?".

James was staring at a console. On it was a pulsating red blip, which constantly bleeped. "A distress call, coming from that asteroid, doesn't match military, pirate or civilian, but I know a distress call when I see one".

"So what's the catch? Why is it we aren't burning at full speed now?".

The wideness and vastness of open space, meant that hearing a distress call meant immediate rescue. It was something practically every single pilot had drilled into them, as no-one wanted to be on the drift. No fuel, little supplies, watching as ships just ignored you. Of course no-one mentioned pirate decoys, tiny little radio transmitters which simulated larger ships, probably to attract a poor freighter, then unload a jury-rigged railgun and steal some stuff. Anyone could wire the reactor up to a pair of metal rails.

"They're directly in our course, and ETA puts our arrival at 20 minutes".

"What do you want me to do?".

"Buckle up, Kamal's carrying out a 6g burn to get us directly on course".

He nodded and hopped into a crash couch. Across the ship, the alarms turned a deep crimson, alerting everyone that the acceleration would begin, and a set of pipes wired up to John's arms began injecting drugs which stimulated his bodies vitals, before clenching his teeth down on a special mouthguard, for a split second, there was no gravity, as the ship changed its orientation, before a roar filled the room with noise. The acceleration felt like someone was sitting on his lap and after a few minutes of it, the noise died down, and the acceleration reduced back to acceptable levels, as John prepared for what was likely just another 'can we borrow some tools, our FTL drive went'

**17 Minutes Later, CIC of the _Canterbury_**  
As the civilian hauler neared the distress call, long range communicators leapt into life. The message was nothing special by the sounds of it, "_CHZZZZ Sghaela CHZZZZ Fru Dandod Khelio CHZZZZZ Mechanalla Sinko CHZZZZZ Lai CHZZZ_".

James stroked his chin, "Hmm, odd, been heavily distorted, what's the laser ranging picking up?".

The sensor board, an outdated piece of equipment which looked like it was held together with duck tape and plastic, beeped once. "Unknown ship, looks like a Light Freighter. 200 meters long, lightly armed I think?".

Before John could reply, the captain interrupted. "Bring us to 2000 kilometres. John? Take Kaylee, Simon and Jayne to the shuttle and investigate them. Grissom nodded,

"Investigate a ship which mysteriously shut down? My favourite. KAYLEE! GET SIMON AND JAYNE AND MEET ME AT THE SHUTTLE BAY".

Before he could leave, James grabbed his shoulder. "You see anything out of the ordinary, hightail it back to the Cant and we leave it behind". He nodded, before throwing a mock salute towards the captain.

**Unknown Starship**  
As the shuttle neared, John looked out upon the vessel. It was built very efficiently, with a frontal section in the shape of an upright ring. On each side was a pair of dorsal guns, which resembled cannons. Across the ship where what looked like PDC turrets which where longer and less bulky than normal ones. The secondary hull leading back almost uniformly to the single engine and no shuttle bays or open cargo doors. "Doesn't look like anyone's home, no power signatures, no lights, nothing".

"Any ideas on what it was doing out here?", Asked Kaylee.

"Don't care much squirt, all I know is that sure as shit ain't any design I've seen before. What about the engine signature?".

"Scanning", said John as the sensors penetrated the odd metal hull. "A primitive plasma driver? Looks much less efficient than our thrusters".

"This just got creepy" said Simon.

"No... It's shiny cap', makes me nostalgic for the older engines", he heard Kaylee bite back.

"'Cept when they blow up from overheating. Where you even born back then?", laughed Jayne.

The faint sound of something heavy striking something metal sounded out, followed by Jaynes' pained cry. "Ow, god'darnit alright woman quit hittin' me".

John rolled his eyes, Kaylee was very much like a daughter to most of the crew. Much younger and less cynical than many, but she could make even the worst engine sing like a butterfly.

"Docking in 3, 2, 1", he said quickly, shutting them up as the entire ship made a metallic clunking noise.

"I can't see any docking ports I recognise, so we're cutting our way in. Open the skirt Kaylee".

"Copy that Cap".

They would have to deal with the fallout of cutting through the hull later. "Laser should take ten or so minutes to cut through standard plating". And yet, 12 seconds later it was through. "Or not?"

Okay now that didn't make any sense either.

"What the hell. Thought you said it'd take longer than that to get through".

"Crew, what's the status on the freighter?".

"Unknown design with a much thinner hull. I don't recognise the shipbuilder either".

Generally, all human ship builders had a specific style in how they built their ships. Gemenon Engineering Systems built their vessels bulky, octagonal and very modular. SpaceX built aesthetically pleasing ships with smooth curves and hidden weapons emplacements. Lockheed-Grumman built wide and flat ships with a main focus on resilience, as much of their money came from designing civilian haulers and military transports. The Canterbury herself was a Lockheed Grumman design, though like almost all engines used by the military, the thrusters where Rolls Royce designed plasma thrusters. Highly efficient, but often lacking high thrust compared to conventional rockets and especially pion rockets.

By the utilitarian design, he'd say the ship they where on was probably closest to the Laniakea Engineering Systems. A lesser well-known company which built small scale multi-role ships. They where often preferred by paramilitary organisations over SpaceX vessels as they lacked the complex moving parts and could be refitted easily.  
"Grissom, the reactor isn't registering as anything I've seen. It's not military or civilian. No antimatter deposits, radioactive materials, or other compounds detected, but I'm picking up faint traces of helium-3".

Now that didn't make any sense. Fusion powerplants had never turned out for humanity, as getting the plasma to hot enough temperatures and high enough pressures required more energy than you got, and at present the closest anyone could got was a reaction which lasted all of seven seconds. So why the hell did they have Helium-3? It's only use back home was to build nuclear weapons.

Things where already starting to look creepy. So why didn't he turn back around and head back?

"Cap, run a full system scan please, I'd feel better if I knew we where safe".

"Copy that, RADAR pulse is out, expecting a bounceback whenever we get a hit". He let his breathing loosen up. The longer that the pulse returned no contacts, the better he would feel. Stealth technology was highly illegal outside the military, and just possessing RADAR absorbent materials or building an emission sink would be enough for an arrest and then several trials. Maybe even jail time.

Finally the plate came free, and John jumped into the vessel. The hallways where tight, and stacked with crates. The arrangement was even odder. Unlike pretty much every ship he had ever been on or seen, this ship had decks arranged parallel to the direction of movement. Why? The ship didn't look like it used centrifugal gravity, and without gravity, months in space could cause significant bone loss, and eventual death.

"Kaylee, head for engineering and try to get the logs, Simon you're with me, maybe we can find some survivors". They all nodded and split into their separate groups. As he proceeded down the corridors he took in the ship. It was a brown and dull grey colour with occasional LEDs lacking light. Some of the crates had blankets and shawls on them.

It reminded him of scenes from old movies. "These crates, they're like tents".

"Who knows", he muttered. "Maybe a refugee ship. Would explain the sorry state its in. Hey cap any strange contacts?".

"Nothing expect 3 corvettes and a frigate 12 gigametres out. IFF's are military by their uniformity, so I'm not sure".

As he continued into the depths, the silence grew, pressing in on all sides. "John this is Kaylee, we've reached engineering, we think. This ship isn't like anything I've ever seen. Nothing matches any known IFFs or technologies, and I don't recognise any of the symbols. They aren't in any books we know".

That was the last straw. "I've had it. Everyone back to the shuttle, double time people I don't want to spend any more time out here". There was no complaint, and they began to run back, until he was interrupted by one of the doors banging. Immediately he drew his weapon. Around the corner, Jayne and Kaylee emerged. "Jayne, get your weapon out. Simon, get the door. Kaylee get behind us".

They took up positions, and Simon hit wat he assumed was the mechanism for the door to open, and it did. Five figures where inside the dully lit room. All where humanoid in shape, dressed in odd-looking fabrics, and opaque masks. Two where collapsed and being held by two more, while the one that was banging the door stared in surprise. "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!", Yelled Jayne.

The beings withdrew, and yelled frantically in their own odd language. Something which reminded John of eastern Europe. "I said put yo-".

Simon held his hand in front of Jayne. "NO, don't shoot, I don't think they can understand us". Jayne didn't lower his weapon.

"Simon are you saying what I think you're saying", said Grissom. More in shock than anything. Before he had a chance to reply, James spoke through the radio. "Guys we have a major problem. The patrol we spotted lit up like a Christmas tree, they're approaching at hyperlight speed and will be here in less than a minute. Get the frak out of there, NOW!".

"No complaint here. Simon, get those things to follow us. I ain't sure if they're friendly, but I sure as hell won't leave them to die. Kayle get the shuttle prepped to leave, Jayne help me with the wounded. Let's double time it people".

They began to run, through the rusted corridors and past multiple small tent-like structures. As they did, thousands of miles away, the _Canterbury_ began burning like hell. It's plasma thrusters lighting up to form a very clear signature, and John jumped into the shuttle. Behind him, the unknowns just stood there like lemons. "Jayne get them sat down".

The shuttle finally started burning away from the ship, and at a rapid pace, it reoriented itself into an intercept course with the _Canterbury_.

Four objects, each the size of a human arm dropped from the patrol and locked onto the _Canterbury_. "TORPEDO LOCK DETECTED".

The four objects sped up, beginning to transit through the space in-between. "Sir the torpedoes are closing with the Canterbury.

John grabbed the microphone, "James, drop the payload, use it as a shield!".

"Stay of this channel John! Alright fella's prepare the cargo bay for jettison".

As the shuttle continued to dive towards the vessel, Jayne chuckled, "bet the companies really wishing they installed PDCs".

They shared a good laugh at that. The torpedoes finally reached the _Canterbury_. The cargo door exploded outwards, and a veritable wall of ice chunks began to float into the space between the ship and torpedoes. All four struck the ice wall, and black vortexes appeared where they where.

"What the fuck was that?!".

"Jesus Christ that thing looked like a black hole".

"Energy signature!".

"Sir they got guns targeting us".

"Massive energy signature, wait, they're firi-".

The channel cut off. The four magnetically accelerated iron slugs ripped through the vessel without any trouble. Instantly, one of the slugs slammed straight through the reactor core. The slugs tore out several of the boron control rods, and then struck the cooling pump, resulting in a lack of water reaching the core. In a few seconds, reactivity rose as the remaining water converted to steam, resulting in a void within the core. The fuel began to rapidly melt down, which in turn reduced efficiency and the reactor died, but the damage was done. Without anything holding it back, the massive tanks of hydrogen and oxygen collided and split open. Sparks from fractured wires, ignited this hydrogen-oxygen mixture, and the Canterbury exploded violently, completely consuming the small ship as the ionised fuel for the engines exploded too.

Before John could comprehend what had happened, Simon was screaming in his ear, "Sir there's a wall of debris approaching at massive speed, we shut down the drive to conserve our signiture, we're sitting ducks!"

"Frak."

**Heirarchy Patrol, 3 days earlier**  
"Keep the scanners hot. They can't have got far", growled Arterius, as the cruiser steadily continued around the system. The quarians had broken council war by planting a colony on a dextro world on the outside of the Attican Traverse. Of course, council law forbid them from colonizing any planet better suited to other species. They had brazenly ignored warnings from the council, and when a peacekeeping fleet had arrived in an attempt to remove them from the world. They had fired on the brave soldiers who had tried to subdue them.

To make matters worse, they disabled the peacekeeping fleet by obliterating their engines and then fleed the system like cowards. So you can imagine how much glee Desolas Arterius had when he found a quarian frigate slinking around the system. He had tried ordered chase throughout the system and the ship had jumped deeper into the Attican Traverse. Now they where hiding somewhere in the local area and Desolas would avenge the forty five council soldiers killed in the skirmish.

"Sir I have a single contact approaching from the edge of the system, non threatening", said the sensors officer.

"Scan and get me a classification".

"Yes sir", the minutes ticked by as the starships sensors carried it their work. "Unknown classification. Size is six times larger than a corvette, but too small to be a frigate. Classifying as a heavy corvette".

Desolas deliberated silently within his head. As the contact remained still onscreen. Another yellow contact appeared next to them. "Sir I've found a dormant mass relay next to the contact. It looks like some sort of small gun skiff. There's a couple of wierd protrusions like batteries".

"What about damage? IFFs?"

"Nothing but... Wait. There's an odd drive signiture coming from the ship". Arterius replied quickly, "What do you mean odd?".

"Well the energy for a ship of its size is much lower than normal, almost as though the ship has built in stealth systems". Desolas thought for a moment. "Run a RADAR scan on the target".

A pulse lit up the sensors screen as the ship used its dishes to gain a clear silhouette on the target. As it was building, Desolas found himself facing a very odd configuration.

The ship was cylindrical, like a long tube with a single drive cone and several suspicious looking flat planes. The front held two slightly odd panels and from the fore hull, slightly up was a conning tower containing another of the wierd panels. Overall the design was very odd.

Nevertheless. It was the only ship in the area, so Desolas decided to ask them. "Unknown ship, this is the Turian Heirarchy cruiser _Basks in the Light of Dawn_. Please hold position and await an inspection team".

Oddly enough when the ship received the communication, the entire vessel heaved itself round with some agility, before burning on a slight course away. As they did, Arterius ordered the Turian fleet to approach the much smaller ship, as the distance ticked down, the ship continued to drift towards the mass relay, which, without warning, activated.

A white glow appeared within the oscillating rings in the relays center, and the ship was, at present orbiting the relay. "Weapons, get me a lock on their ship and order them to stop their engines".

"Sir?"

"The only people stupid enough to actively open a mass relay is the quarians, this ship is a quarian one, judging by the simple design. Prepare to open fire".

The young Turian at weapons was hesitant, and paused. "Lieutenant... Is there a problem?".

The man was from Palevan, having bright blue facial markings and wearing a red uniform. "Sir this isn't right, what if they aren't quarians at all, what if-".

"If you are refusing to carry out my orders you can take this up with a court martial. If you can't follow my instructions, then I will remove you of duty". The man sighed, and pressed a red button, before using a joystick to highlight and target the ship.

"Enemy ship locked", he said.

Arterius pressed a blue button to his front, "Unknown quarian ship desist and submit yourselves to the authority of the Turian Heirarchy now, or we will open fire".  
On response, all they got was a message which none of them could understand. "_Unknown warship. This is the PT Boat, D-462, We welcome you to human space, and are honoured to lead first contact between our people_".

No other message was received. The guns aboard the _Basks in the Light of Dawn_, spoke, sending fully charged rounds towards the enemy ship. Arterius wrongfully assumed the shells would do minor damage, possibly not even pop the shields. Instead, one of the rounds slammed straight into the antimatter containment shelter. Normally, extra armour would have folded out in battle, but in this case, the crew of D-462 never had a chance to lower the protective titanium shells. In an instant, the hull was reduced to no more than elementary particles, and the ship existed only in memory.

"Spirits what the hell happened".

"Unknown ship has been destroyed".

"High energy gamma rays consistent with antimatter detected"

"The relay is spinning up".

"There's another contact, this one is the same. Receiving hail".

The crackling voice was more like an asari this time, and came just 12 seconds after the other ship arrived. "_Unknown Ship, this is the systems alliance PT Boat B-540, you have destroyed one of our vessels and as such we are within rights to open fire. Break off your attack now before we continue_".

Arterius was speechles as he realised his mistake. He had just attacked a new race, and it was unlikely they could talk this out. "Sir the enemy ship is charging weapons!".

"Fire a salvo of disruptor torpedoes and prepare to target their engines. I don't want them destroyed, just disabled". In an instant, four torpedoes dropped from the flanks of the ship, and began accelerating to cruising speed. In retaliation, the PT boat also dropped a salvo of torpedoes, 2 locked on each of their frigate escorts, and 4 locked on _Basks in the Light of Dawn_ herself.

The human torpedoes approached far quicker than the Turian ones, and the Turian made vessels found themselves struggling to intercept the missiles, which zigzagged from side to side using their manoeuvring thrusters. The GUARDIAN system struggled to compensate, and the frigate designated as FG54 was struck by both torpedoes. In an instant, a spray of plasma exploded from the shell and washed over the hull.  
Both torpedoes boiled several hull plates and leaked deadly hot plasma into the ship itself. The kinetic barriers did not stop the spray much, as kinetic barriers where specifically designed to stop kinetic energy of whole objects, not individual atoms. The ship buckled like an asteroid, and the crew was thrown from their stations as several secondary explosions from power capacitors and backup generators rippled the affected areas.

The second frigate was just about able to intercept both torpedoes, however Basks in the Light of Dawn took one of the torpedoes to its starboard mass accelerator. The plasma spilt from the main barrel into the power capacitors, which ignited as the graphite burnt at such high temperatures, killing the crewmen operating the cannon. "Sir we lost the starboard accelerator. Our torpedoes are twelve seconds out".

Arterius coughed into his claw, and wiped some sweat from forehead, before angrily gesturing towards the enemy ship. "Fire a full salvo at them". They'd deal with the fallout later.

As the remaining accelerator lit up, the torpedoes entered the five kilometer range of the boat it needed to begin firing it's PDCs. The metallic rounds where projected towards the torpedo salvo from all three of the ships PDCs, which individually focused on a missile each. Of the four torpedoes fired, three where intercepted by the CIWS grid of the PT boat, the final one exploded prematurely as it neared the hull, and the resulting singularity sucked the forty millimeter cannon from its hold, leaving the ship a gun down.

The iron slugs all struck the fore hull of the ship, but the nature of human armour dissipated their explosive energy fairly well, and as a resulting, only a single deck was exposed to vacuum. None of the crewmen died due to all wearing their spacesuits, and the PT boat leapt into FTL travel to escape the Turian ships, only to detonate when it left FTL. The hit had completely destroyed the station responsible for venting static charge buildup, and while the ship had a secondary, the relay travel pushed the venting deck to its limit, which resulted in one of the electromagnets in the antimatter storage bay going offline. Several nanograms of antimatter escaped through, and cracked open the containment, and the ship disappeared in another fiery explosion.

Neither side knew the repercussions of their aggressive actions.

* * *

**Codex Entry: Human Technology, Introduction**  
Human technology never had access to the pseudoscience methods of manipulation described in science fiction, and despite everyone's best hopes, feasible FTL travel did not become available until the late 2400s. This saw the creation of the wormhole drive and the implementation on many ships. A wormhole drive is a pretty simple creation. First a singularity is created, in this case a Kugelblitz singularity created from antimatter will suffice, but then a large amount of negative potential energy is concentrated via the Casimir effect inside of the singularity, preventing the formation of an event horizon. The wormhole will then consume the entire ship, and any auxiliary craft within a certain radius. The ship then travels a small distance in the subspace realm until opening a second wormhole and leaving.

Energy is provided mainly by antimatter reactors thanks to their high fuel storage density and ease of access as well as efficiency. An antimatter reactor unfortunately also produces a lot of heat, which is much more easily detectable, so some stealth ships get clever. Developed in the 21st century, the RBMK 3500 reactors where the first of a long line of seventh generation thorium reactors. They are almost immune to meltdowns due to their choice of thorium fuel, and RBMK-4500 models are much more easily concealable, making them ideal choices for stealth ships, even if their power production rate is lower for their size. Other than these main methods of power generation, highly efficient plasma drives propel ionised gases at extremely high velocities for high thrust to mass ratio.

Weapons technology has developed alongside these new power methods, with many space-based artillery weapons reliant on railguns and coilguns for close range battle. At longer ranges, ships will rely heavily on torpedoes as they are versatile and reliable. At extreme ranges of less than 200 kilometres some ships carry standard cannons. As in, black powder cannons. As in basically the same design as what was used on the ironclads of the 18 century, the design hasn't really changed a lot since then.


	2. The SSV Donnager

_"The Zehpyr class goes back to the good old days of warfare between the South American Republic and the United States of America. Where battlecruisers would just unload missile after missile at each other until one got bored and fired their railgun" - _Ship Developer Sinon Quade, Commissioning of the _SSV Zephyr._

* * *

**John Grissom**

John awoke with a pounding headache and a seriously sick feeling in his stomach. Clearly he had drunk waaay to much last night, and judging by the stray droplets of blood, probably someone got punched. As he opened his eyes, he took note of three things. Firstly, the hotel room was very cramped, secondly, someone was fiddling with wire in the corner, and thirdly, the tactical display looked an awful lot like a computer screen onboard a shuttle.

He groaned and pushed up from the chair as the events came back to him. Jayne noticed his state and smirked, "Looks like cap's up from his little nap". Then the events came back to him. The _Canterbury_'s destruction, the unknown freighter, then the debris field shaking their ship around like an oversized tin can. "What's the status on the shuttle?".

Kaylee rose from the corner, "Comms, Engineering and ECMs gone. So is the primary airlock. The only system left is the distress beacon which runs on its own closed system loop. I broadcast a signal 2 hours ago and it just hit an FTL buoy, so we should be getting a response". He grunted as something in his arm gave way, and raised his eyebrows at the bloodied bandage. "You got hit by a shard of metal from the shuttles cargo bay. Minor damage".

He nodded glumly and set back down. "What about our friends over there", he said, pointing towards where the aliens where sat with Simon typing things down on his tablet. He then rose and walked over. "They're not human. DNA scans read a standard double helix, but mirrored to ours meaning they're dextro-biology. The scanner also found a strangely low presence of lymph nodes and white blood cells. Whoever they are, they cannot be exposed to unsterile air, not matter their situation. I've found some basic information on them".

He brought up a small device on his tablet. "It's some sort of translator. It fits into their body and directly translates other languages. So far I've programmed it with as much of the human language as I found on the ship's dictionary. So they can speak basic English. This here... ". He said, gesturing to the tallest of the quarians, clad in some lighter fabrics and with embroidered patterns on his suit. "Is Zaal'Koris vas Quib-Quib. He's an Admiral".

The alien stepped forward, "_Captain, we thank you for rescue us. We Quarians not survive without help_".

"That's completely fine, Admiral. My name is John Grissom. Over there is Kaylee Fry, Jayne Cobb and Simon Tamm. Can you tell me who the fuckheads who blew up the Cant are?".

At the unfamiliar word, the Quarian tensed, before speaking again, "_Reptiles called Turians. Very militant and very big guns. From Palevan. They angry at us for accident. We shoot back to defend, they kill ship. You arrive, they think you illegal, so they fire at you. And at others_".

"Wait, others? You telling me they've killed more".

Koris nodded, "_We hid. Other ships, smaller ships entered. Began broadcasting message. Turians think they us and fire. They kill first, but second escape through Mass Relay_".

Jayne crossed his arms. "How large where these other ships".

"_60 meters. Small, very small. Mainly missiles. No guns_". Jayne mumbled, before speaking louder, "Sounds like a Patrol Torpedo Boat, against ships of that size, no way they stood a chance".

"We not know what that means, but we help with repairs. This:", Said Koris, removing a small device from his belt, "Fusion core. Can help boost communications with extra power, could possibly-".

He didn't get a chance to finish, as the entire ship blared in alarms and went a dark red. "Incoming communications from a ship. Patching through now".

There was a pause, "_This is the SSV Donnager to unknown shuttle. We have received your distress call and are en-route now. ETA of 12 hours_". There was silence afterwards for a moment before Jayne let out a whoop. "You hear that boys? The _Donnie_ is coming to get us". He high-fived with one of the quarians, who looked very confused.

"The _Donnie_ is one of ours. Fairly large _Zephr_ class. A beauty if I do say so myself. She's much larger than those other ships, we'll be safe there".

The admiral let out what he assumed was a sigh, "Cruiser better than nothing. Many Thanks Captain".

The sensor console beeped once. "Incoming contact at Hyperlight speeds... _Zephr_ class with an IFF that matches the _Donnager_". The ship finally bleeped into the system. And John breathed a sigh of relief as he awaited rescue.

* * *

**12 Hours Later, SSV Donnager, Zephyr class Cruiser**  
Never in his life, had John ever seen a sight which was half as awe inspiring as the _Donnager_. Measuring a mighty 694 meters in length, the versatile and sturdy frame was remarkably smooth for a spacefaring vessel. Three massive barrels at the nose contained the primary and secondary spinal weapons, its railguns. 4 forward batteries on the nose contained a railgun each, as the slowly widening hull revealed another set of four batteries, these with 28 centimetre wide cannons. The ship bristled with point defence cannons, some 30 millimetre, some 40 millimetre.

The quarians where transfixed. Over their 12 hour wait for the _Donnie_ to arrive, Admiral Koris had been telling him of their own home, the migrant fleet. A 50000 strong flotilla of warships containing the entire population of the quarian migrancy. From what he had guessed, it sounded like their ships where falling apart and they had likely never seen anything like the _Donnager_. The red overtones and black hull where strangely ethereal, illuminated only by the spotlights as they where manoeuvred into the vehicle bay of the cruiser.

Inside, John was surprised to see a smaller warship perched on a docking clamp. He turned to Jayne. "_Seawolf_ class, its a patrol torpedo boat. The cruiser grade warships sometimes carry them as opposed to shuttles". It was a squat cylinder with several flat panels where supposedly the PDCs where stowed, and its front contained the two torpedo launchers, and spinal cannon. As the shuttle they where in hit the deck with a loud clunk. The engines on the Donnie reignited, pushing the ship forwards at a comfortable 9.81 meters per second squared, and John stumbled slightly as they opened the doors...

To be greeted by a set of six laser sights trained on them. "Drop any equipement and put your hands in the air! You are now prisoners of the Earth Systems Alliance Navy". It was standard drill to make everyone drop whatever they where carrying, and Grissom complied, nodding at the quarians to do the same. The marines finally entered. They where clad in deep black armour. Red lights through the eyepieces where the only sign of their life and they all held SA90 Bullpup Assault Rifles, equipped with holographic sights and laser sights.

One by one, a scanner was waved over each of the crew, and they where all moved out from the shuttle, keeping their hands clearly visible. They where led through narrow decks, with several closed doors. Finally they where led into a small room, where they where left alone. Several crash couches where folded up against the walls but aside from that, the room contained nothing except a breach kit.

"Sooooo, what do we do now?".

"Talk I guess?".

"I must say captain. This ship is magnificent. It would put an asari cruiser to shame".

His ears perked up, "Asari? Exactly how many alien races are there".

One of the other quarians, dressed in a darker suit began counting on his fingers. "Let's see, there's the Turians, Asari, Salarians, Hanar, Volus, Batarians, Krogan, Drell, Elcor".

He paused slightly, as if trying to remember if there where any others. "What about the... That's it you're right".

"Wow, there's an entire galaxy of species and we never even knew? Shiny", said Kaylee.

The door slammed open, and a man dressed in force recon powered armour stepped in. Behind him was his ally. A DRGN MEC. Short for Dual Rail-Gun Nova Mech, the DRGN was one of the most dangerous weapons on the ground. They where made of a unique carbon-alloy exoskeleton with layers of protective armour, and a mouth mounted plasma railgun. A pair of Kevlar wings folded up could be stretched to a 14 foot wingspan, and they where shaped like bat wings. A coiled tail and four fairly average legs where beneath the creature, and its green optical sensors constantly moved to keep them in focus. The DRGN was the latest model of unmanned fighting vehicle. Capable of completely stealthy flight in atmosphere, and speeds of over Mach 1.2. Their weapons could put a tank to shame, and this one was painted a deep black colour.

"Captain Yao wants to see you and the highest ranking alien". He looked around to Koris, who rose from his seated position on the crash couch. As he eyed the DRGN with mistrust, Koris steadily left the room, with another Force Recon trooper, this one with a deep crimson dragon. As they moved through the decks, Koris quietly asked Grissom a very good question. "Are all interactions with your military this... serious?".

"No, usually they're slightly more restrained and friendly. It might be because they got word of the missing PT boats".

"They we may have a problem if they think we did it".

Throughout the exchange the quarian was deeply in thought, and no more words where exchanged until they reached the bridge. A tall woman dressed in a blue and red uniform embroidered 'Donnager' stood at attention. She was Asian in descent, and the wrinkles on her face probably put her age at close to 80. Approaching mid life.

"Captain Grissom my name is Captain Theresa Yao. This here is Colonel Briggs, and Lieutenant Cowell of the force recon brigade". She then turned to the Zaal. "And you?".

"Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Quib-Quib of the Quarian Migrant Fleet. Those other quarians are my surviving crewmembers and... we are deeply in your debt for your timely rescue, captain". Grissom noticed how he bowed slightly at the word captain, as though he deferred completely to both his and Yao's judgement. Both here and back on the shuttle.

"Well, a pleasure to meet you Mr Quib-Quib? Or is it Mr Koris?".

"Just Koris will be more than enough Captain Yao". The woman was unchanged throughout the entire exchange. "Well, Mr Grissom and Mr Koris. Could you please explain to me, why we are missing a PT Boat, with another exploding shortly after arriving back at Shanxi?".

The room was completely silent. Only interrupted by the occasional bleeps and taps at the consoles. "Well? We lost both with all hands. One was completely gone, the other had its engineering deck exposed to vacumn, resulting in a dangerous buildup of static which was then made worse by a relay transit".

"Captain. My own ship, the _Canterbury_ was destroyed by unknown ships. I can assure you it wasn't us. And the same for the Admiral here, we found his own ship completely disabled, apparently by the same people".

Theresa seemed to consider this, before bringing up an image. "Drive signatures. 12 unknown ships approaching at hyper light speeds as we speak. On a direct intercept course. I don't know how at his range to the star, but they are nevertheless". She was of course referencing the Morrigan Effect. When a ship opened a wormhole, it had to excite negative matter concentrations within the singularity of a black hole. This created a sphere of space with a massive problem. If a wormhole was too close to a star or photon creating object then the photons would become trapped within the wormhole and cook anything that entered it.

So somehow the unknown ships where either avoiding this or just didn't use wormholes. Nevertheless, there they where. Cruising directly towards a Systems Alliance cruiser. If their lethal loadouts before didn't spell trouble, then the fact they where on an intercept course normally only attempted by dedicated close range ships spelled it out. In the Systems Alliance, you where either really good at long range or close range. Ships which could do everything where few and far between, and the _Zephyr_ class was probably as versatile as a warship got in the systems alliance. The missiles of a PT boat swarm in a ship with the power of a gunship if you where facing its spinal mounts.

Shame it could only fire its main railgun once before needing to recharge, a deadly flaw which was never really exploited. If you could survive a heavy railgun round without damage and didn't surrender. You where either really stupid, or had a swarm behind you.

Well these ships where certainly numerous, and they looked stupid enough if they where picking a fight with the Alliance.

* * *

**Arcturus Station, President Laura Roslin**  
Across other star systems, directly to the galactic west, stood the pride and joy of the Alliance, Arcturus Station. The 12 kilometre long station was effectively a giant centrifuge. The outer habitats was a separate ring, connected to a bulky and much thinner but longer inner section where much of the production capabilities of the ring was. Arcturus wasn't a civilian station like Tycho, or Ceres or Pallas. No Arcturus was the military and diplomatic headquarters of the Alliance, and the second largest shipyard in the federation, second only to the Elysium shipyards around Luna.

The outer ring was a beautiful area, made up of an impressive amount of flora and fauna as a way to make the industrial feel of the ring slightly less like a giant machine filled with robots, and to allow a calming place to conduct shore leave. While a military station at heart, Arcturus was still accessible to the civilian populous after a few background checks and questions. Freighters came and went at their leisure, often carrying out trading in the civilian dockyards as opposed to the much larger military yards.  
In of this station, inside of the massive senate building stood the current President of the Systems Alliance, Laura Roslin. A tough and yet somehow gentle woman, she had become very popular with the younger populace of the Systems Alliance and was sworn in for three consecutive terms. Her policies and methods of dealing with unrest and disorder where one-of-a-kind, and while there where many who would prefer if she where buried, they where few and far between.

A common saying in the Alliance, was that if you met Laura Roslin, you would follow her to the end of your days. A tall, red, curly haired woman who was as old as some of the admirals where at 98, and yet she didn't look a day over 40. Few famous politicians had inspired such support from the younger populace as Laura Roslin.  
And at this present time, Laura was staring with what could only be described as a faint look of disinterest as Admiral Hackett went through the fleet numbers.

"- And with the _SSV Kilimanjaro_ nearing completion, that puts us 1 year ahead of the scheduled completion date, for the first wave of _Asimov_ class Fleet Carriers. We have also completed work on the _SSV Mjolnir_, and she will be joining the 10th fleet under Fleet Admiral Lucindia Cain as we speak".

She turned to the older man, who was now flicking faster through his tablet. "As for other ships, the hulls have already been laid for the _Nyx_, the _Lachesis_ and the _Argos_ which also completes the second wave of _Fury_ class warships. But we have a large problem with 2 remaining hulls for the _Cerberus_ and the _Kotlin_ as its becoming apparent that-".

"Admiral".

"Yes President".

"I have confidence that you will complete the remaining _Sovremenny_ class ships on time, and even if not, we should not have a problem, as other fleets can compensate where they cannot".

"Yes Madam President, but-".

"Do you really think that the entire combined pirate armada could take down the _Asimov_?".

"Well... No".

"Then we do not have to worry if the tenth fleet has to hold its horses for a few months on its carriers. They've waited this long for the _Mjolnir_, they should be fine for an extra few months to allow the drone factories to keep up".

"Okay ma'am, I just don't want this Alliance falling apart because the pirates take Elysium or something because we overstretched our fleet, and if-".

"Admiral we have been expanding for 300 years into space and we have dealt with everything this galaxy has thrown at us. When the pirates attacked Ceres with railgun ships, we developed torpedoes. When they attacked Elysium with torpedoes and railguns, we developed stealth ships. When insurrections hit Saggitaron we developed Force Recon. When our bodies struggled to adapt to low gravity, we developed bone density drugs, When the Spanish Flu struck down Caprica, we developed gene therapy".

She rose up, "Have faith that the men and women under your command are capable of doing their jobs. Without trust we fall victim to that which nearly tore the old world apart". He nodded and rose with her. "Of course Ma'am".

As they walked in silence through the corridors, Laura sighed slightly, "Do you think we will ever find aliens?".

"Statistically there should be thousands of races, and yet there aren't that means either somethings stopping them, or we're the first". He paused slightly for effect. "If we're the first, then all this: ", he said, gesturing to a bay where the hull of a _Mersey_ class was being repaired, "was for nothing. But if its the other option...",

"Then I'm happy we introduced the _Asimov_ this early. I may be a big advocator for peace. But if it comes to it, I'll ram a 2 ton tungsten slug up ET's ass myself".

And with that, the President left Hackett to his thoughts, headed for the shipyards where the commissioning of the _Mjolnir_ was ready, and where she would break a bottle of wine over the warship. But something inside of Hackett felt odd. Somehow, he had a gut feeling, that this would be the last year that humanity would find itself alone. He

hoped to god that Fermi and Drake where wrong.

After all, nothing spelt doom, like N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fi x Fc x L

* * *

**Codex Entry: Force Recon and DRGN Mecs**  
Force Recon is a slightly underappreciative term which is used to describe the shear badassery and awe inspiring power which is laid onto those who join the Force Recon division. Unlike ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), Force Recon marines are trained not in espionage, but in fear and power tactics. Every marine is equipped with a set of Reaver Powered Armour which enables movement in vacumn and atmosphere and has been tested on some of the most hostile climates in existence. Armed with an autocannon under one arm and a grenade launcher on the other, they are fit for almost any situation and their strength alone is enough to pulverise tanks at close range.

What makes these soldiers even more lethal is the use of the DRGN Mechanised Unit. Short for Dual-Rail-Gun Nova Mecs, they are smooth, stealthy mechanised animals with highly advanced VI intelligence. Since Artificial Intelligence hit a dead end, DRGNs remain an extremely advanced VI, however this VI is as close to an AI as one can get, with each having tiny irregularities in the code which make every Mec act different. The Mecs carry special railguns which fire plasma as opposed to the older DRGN Mecs which only fired tungsten rounds. Their armour can easily withstand gunfire, and their massive wingspans, razor sharp claws, strong tails and loyalty to their rider make them deadly threats, even to aircraft, as they can hit Mach 1.3 in atmosphere, notably in a dive bomb.

All-in-all, to take down a single Force Recon marine and DRGN you'd need an army. To take down a division you'd need an armada, and to take down the entire program you'd need the might of the galaxy behind you.

**Codex Entry: Zephyr class Cruiser**  
Size: 694 meters in length

Dry Mass: 255,000 metric tons

Primary Armaments: 1 Spinal Zako-Sitara Heavy Rail-gun, 2 Gimballed Spinal FT-18 Superheavy Coil-guns, 8 280 millimetre smoothbore battlecannons on four turrets, 4 turreted AES-195 Rail-guns

Missile Armaments: 8 Flechette Batteries, 16 Torpedo Tubes, 2 Missile Tubes

Defensive Features: Advanced Target Tracking and Prediction Computer, Standard Armour plating, Standard ablative plating, 72 Retractable PDC mounts for 30 or 40 millimetre cannons.

Crew: 1940 as standard. Minimum of 210 and carries at least 120 marines

Powerplant: 4 K12 Antimatter Reactors

Propulsion: 4 'Legasov' Type Cruiser Grade Plasma Thrusters

Council Nickname and Classification: Alliance Cruiser (Heavy Cruiser)

Stealth Rating: 7 - QEC Communications, Smooth construction profile, ablative armour

Auxiliary Craft Launchers: 8 Drone launchers, 6 Shuttle bays

Utilities: Large Cargo bay for extra munitions and ground vehicles, boarding pods on broadsides. Often carries a larger than normal barracks capability, and contains advanced RCS grid.

* * *

**As you can see, didn't quite go as codex crazy as I did on supremacy, and I'm much less Naïve now. But look at that. Two chapters in one night. Just so you know I will try to have a chapter a week, but I might fall behind, so don't expect it that way. I do have a life and a university degree to begin.**


	3. Torpedo Range

"_Can I sit next to the window? I get no fucking light in there. Look, I know why you're here. You went in with her upside down, so the first thing to go was the nose. Armour all gets stripped away, but the ribbing stays put. The collar gets destroyed; those quarters are gone. The spine gets ripped back, severed the arms. Its basically done from the snout along the head, all down the neck and the spine. Except the engines. They stayed intact, I'm guessing?_", Shipwrights Director Sinon Quade, Following the Destruction of the _Prometheus_, Operation: Mosquito Net

**SSV _Donnager_, Somewhere near Shanxi**  
As the _Donnager_ hurtled through space at thousands of miles per hour, Grissom had a growing feeling of dread in his gut as the unknown ships neared. He couldn't tell for sure if these guys where the same, as they where far outside of radar range and in FTL which would blueshift the radiation. "Sir they're entering range of our long range missiles in 1 minute".

"Contacts have dropped from FTL".

Theresa crossed her arms. "Hail them".

The officer, Carl if Grissom remembered correctly, pressed a button on his screen. "Channels open".

"This is the Captian Theresa Yao of the SSV _Donnager_. Break course now or you will be fired upon". Nothing, it was obvious that the ships either didn't understand, or didn't care. Koris stepped towards the captain. "Captain, I realise I am a guest on your ship. But they may understand my own language if they are not of the human species".  
Theresa was silent for a moment, "Fine, translate what I say as I say it please". He nodded, and pressed buttons on his helmet. "This is Captain Theresa Yao of the SSV _Donnager_, this is your final warning. If you maintain your present course, you will be fired upon". A whining crossed with a mechanical screech cut through the air like microphone feedback. "They're jamming us".

Thousands of miles away, the drives on the ships continued to burn at full speed. Pushing them towards the _Donnager_ at an alarming rate. Inside the CiC, Yao stood with an angry glare. "Sir I can see 6 frigates approaching at high acceleration. They just passed LIDAR range".

A new alarm sounded out. Sounding oddly like the chirping of a creature, but more mechanical in nature, as dozens of small objects dropped from the sides of the unknown ships. "Missile launch alert".

"Sound general quarters, all hands man battlestations. Prepare to return fire".

Inside of the brig of the Donnie, the lights went from an aquatic blue, to a deep red, and the quarians and humans alike where immediately on high alert. One of the quarians, by the name of Faunz'Reegar asked the question on everyone's mind.

"What's happening?".

Jayne answered for him, "Battlemode lighting, must be a drill?".

A mechanical clunking sounded out followed by the faint sounds which where slightly muffled. It sounded very much like setting off a rocket underwater. Simon narrowed his eyes, "Okay, what's that".

Jayne raised his eyebrows. "That sounds, like torpedoes and drones being fired".

"Sounds like a lot of torpedoes and drones"

Kaylee managed to whisper to Simon, "I don't think this is a drill".

To answer, Jayne pulled down one of the crash couches and began fastening himself in. "Maybe we ought to fasten ourselves in". The quarians watched in interest as Kaylee and Simon followed suite, before fastening themselves in a similar way. Several closed their eyes (only noticeable when the bioluminescence disappeared) and clenched their fists. Likely in fear more than anything else. For a race which lived on starships, the fears where pretty easy to imagine.

At the fore of the Donnager, another salvo of torpedoes left its rapid-fire tubes, and their own plasma thrusters accelerated them at speeds which would liquify any organic. The drones where limited slightly due to what they carried. But all where in principle the same. Basically cylinders with weapons duck taped to them and an enormously powerful thrust gimballed plasma thruster.

Inside the CiC the red triangles signifying the unknown ships flashed to a blue, and dozens upon dozens of tiny red dots began to slowly traverse the gap between the blue silhouette of the Donnager remained steadfast. Behind the missiles, a dozen or so drones, signified by blue dots where accelerating to meet the enemy ships, who had launched 6 smaller contacts and a pair of 2 larger contacts. Both looking a lot like drones.

"Torpedoes are away, guidance lock on all targets". Yao pulled up a wide display of the battle, watching as the enemy ships began to break into a slightly more scattered formation in a pitiful attempt to confuse the torpedo tracking software, their own torpedoes traversing the space slower than the Alliance missiles.  
"Well whoever they are, and whatever they've come to do. It just became a suicide run. They started this fight... and we're going to finish it".

**Arcturus Command Center, Admiral Steven Hackett**  
The doors burst open to a wide open room filled with military personnel. The command center of Arcturus station was absolutely colossal. Almost the size of a warship by its own right. Filled with computer screens and sensor officers constantly monitoring the inbound traffic to the station and those in holding patterns or going around. The massive amount of traffic would be handed off to station traffic control once they entered a 3000 kilometre radius around the station.

But this room was where important decisions where made. The fixed orbital gun platforms surrounding Arcturus where monitored and targeted remotely from here to prevent tampering. They where colossal guns and Arcturus had a dozen placed in a sphere around her. If the senate building was the heart of Arcturus, then the command center was the brain.

At present, Hackett did not have time to take in the fluid movements and synchronicity within the room. He marched straight towards the man who had summoned him. A young lieutenant by the name of Felix Gaeta.

"Mr Gaeta I just received your communication. Can you explain to me why this was sent directly to me and not to admiral Souther in the Arcturus Defence Fleets?".  
The man stood, before saluting briskly. "Sir about 12 hours ago I received a communication from the Shanxi defence force. They had misplaced two of their patrol torpedo boats. One had never returned from the scheduled activation of relay 314, and the other exploded shortly after re-arriving due to static build up overloading the antimatter containment cell".

"Mr Gaeta what classification where the PT boats?".

"They where _Seawolf_ class sir".

He lifted a tablet, "If they where _Los Angeles_ class I'd be inclined to say 'the containment failed', but containment failures don't happen on the _Seawolf_, what else?".

"We also received this communication from Shanxi.

_Shanxi Command to Arcturus. Distress signal has been received by the Shanxi defence flotilla. Signal was heavily corrupted but appeared to say that the Ice Hauler Canterbury came under attack from unknown forces shortly after investigating an unknown distress signal._  
_Have dispatched the SSV Donnager to rescue survivors and bring back to Shanxi"._

"Have Shanxi reported anything since then?".

Gaeta nervously fiddled with the top button of his uniform. His blue eyes betraying his nervous stature. "Yes sir, last communication received from the _Donnager_ said they where picking up odd contacts on their long range sensors".

"Alright keep me informed on any developments. What about intelligence on the unknowns".

Gaeta picked up a tablet from his table. "Nothing. No drive signatures, no known IFFs, and they where still outside of our high-accuracy sensors".

Hackett sighed, "Keep this between us for now, we can't afford a panic. Contact Admiral Souther and tell him to dispatch a carrier to Shanxi. I want to see the survivors as soon as we can". Gaeta nodded and sat back down at his post.

Hackett turned and began walking quickly from the command room. Something about this felt very odd, and he didn't like it one bit. As he entered the grey, utilitarian elevator down towards the office for the president. He began fiddling with his watch, a nervous habit he picked up in his days onboard the Everest. Oh how he missed the simplicity of being in command of a battleship.

Turned a corner, he knocked several times on the door to the office of the president, before a gentle voice beckoned him to enter. Roslin was presently looking through a report on industrial quotas. It was a fairly boring one, only stating that production of munitions on Falkland was meeting demand quotas. She'd rather be doing anything else, but it was part of the job of being president.

"Admiral Hackett, I presume you have something urgent. Judging by the fact you almost never knock".

Roslin was probably one of the few who could reliably read the older admiral. They where childhood friends. And at one point Hackett might have found her attractive, had she not married Rear Admiral Adama instead, who was presently stationed over Terra Nova onboard the _SSV Galactica_.

"We have bad news coming in from Shanxi". She stopped reading the report and leant back. "Is it something to do with the activation of the relay? Because from my knowledge we had opened the system for civilian use two months before activating relay 314?"

He gulped and handed her the report, "The two PT boats sent to activate the relay? Well, one never reported back and the other exploded due to static disabling its antimatter storage". She flicked her eyes up and narrowed them. Even through her narrow rimmed glasses they where terrifying. "_Seawolf_ class ships don't explode from static build-up. I believe that's why the _Los Angeles_ class lasted all of two days before we decommissioned her entire lineup".

"To make matters worse. A civilian ship, the _Canterbury_, went boom after investigating an unknown distress call. The survivors broadcast a distress call, and Shanxi sent the _Donnager_ to retrieve the survivors but now that's lost contact after reportedly being on an intercept with unknown ships". She dropped the report.

"Any chance this is pirates?".

"Possibly. It all depends on if the _Donnie_ reports back". She pursed her lips, "This is more your speed than mine, but have the military move to Defence Condition 4, just in case. Also begin moving the civilian populace on Shanxi to the bunkers. Tell them its probably nothing but better safe than sorry".

He nodded, "I'll alert general Williams now".

"Admiral?". She stopped him just before he left, looking deeply in thought.

"Yes Ma'am".

"You remember our conversation yesterday?", she asked.

He nodded, remembering their discussion. "Why do I get the feeling that the irony of having such a discussion just days before first contact will be something I'm remembered for", she said.

"It might be noth-".

"And I hope to god it is Steven, because if it's not...". She didn't need to finish the sentence for him to get the meaning of the statement.

**Turian Patrol Cruiser, _Basks in the Light of Dawn_, 13 hours earlier, Magna fleet Shipyards**  
"_I'd just like to remind you General, that this meeting is completely classified_".

Desolas nodded as he entered the briefing room. Alongside him where several other officers including the captains of the ships he had taken to relay 314. An unfamiliar face was an officer who Desolas had never met before. He knew her of course, Admiral Equbia Mutilius, fourth fleet. She was fairly well known to lower ranking officers, especially those who worked near the Attican traverse, with it being one of the only main fleets in the area possessing dreadnoughts. 2 to be exact.

Connected to them via a QEC Relay directly to the Citadel, was Councillor Sparatus, who represented the Turian heirarchy. "_Okay Arterius, tell me exactly what happened. Quickly!_".

He took a deep breath before starting. "I encountered a Quarian research patrol scanning moons in System D4R1 made up of a single frigate grade armed warship. After hailing them, I discovered that Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Neema was commanding the mission. Seeing this as an opportunity to perhaps gain some semblance of revenge for what happened above Ike several weeks ago".

Sparatus nodded, agreeing with him, "_Sounds good so far_".

"After they refused to acknowledge my demands, they retreated through relay 31A into System 314 which contained both Relay 31A and Relay 314. By this time they had hidden somewhere but as we decelerated we detected a second warship". He brought up a file on his omnitool and opened up a 3 dimensional plan of the unknown warship.

"I tried to contact said warship, but as I did so it activated the so-far dormant mass relay 314". At that, a gasp went straight to Sparatus' and Mutilius' faces at what they had done. "Continue General".

"I attempted to halt their actions, but they broadcast a corrupted message, and engaged weapons. So seeing a threat, I proceeded to open fire. The shot blew their primary fuel tank, and a second ship appeared from the relay, to which both sides opened fire, leading to their retreat as well".

Sparatus narrowed his eyes angrily, "_Tell me about the ships_".

"They're smaller than frigates but larger than corvettes. Armed with only torpedoes and some sort of ballistic point defence guns".

"_Continue with the story General, I will have our tacticians look for weaknesses_".

"After this the quarians showed up and tried to escape, but we where able to disable their ship. At this point we where cruising to recon the Relay 314, when a liveship sized contact let out a high power radar pulse. We engaged the contact after it tried to flee, and since then we have returned back here to repair and resupply". Sparatus seemed satisfied with the discussion, but Mutilius looked sceptically at him, and he silently swore that he didn't have time to come up with a better excuse.

"_Well that sounds good to me. So what do you intend to do now?_".

Sparatus breathed and brought up another document. "I believe that the admiral Koris was rescued from their ship before we where able to mount a boarding action, and escaped onboard either a shuttle, or one of the other contacts. According to my scans, there's a fairly light trail of ionised particles present in fusion drives leading behind the fifth gas giant. My intent is to find Koris, then proceed through relay 314".

Sparatus sat back on his chair, his hologram flickering slightly. "_Admiral Mutilius, you are to accompany General Arterius to the system, and are to follow my orders there. General, capture Koris, then proceed through the relay to recon the system_".

Mutilius looked positively irate at the conclusion, but begrudgingly agreed to Sparatus' orders. Desolas smiled when the Councillor ordered him to wait behind. "Councillor?".  
"_Desolas if the quarian put up resistance you have my expressed permission to open fire. If you're own predictions that the quarians have somehow... uplifted these humans are correct, then you may subjugate their homeworld. If we can, we may have another client race by the end of the year_". His smile grew at hearing the itinery. If he was responsible for such a thing he would be promoted. He could imagine his wildest dreams of becoming the High General of the entire Turian Infantry, or maybe even Primarch.

"Understood Councillor, I won't let you down".

"I know you won't Desolas. Make those suit rats pay for what they've done".

He saluted, before the communication cut off, leaving him alone with his thoughts as he left the briefing room, heading for the CiC of Menae's Revenge. She was an impressive ship, 1173 meters in length, with a pair of dreadnought grade accelerators and a large complement of strike craft and GUARDIAN lasers.

"General Arterius". He turned to see Admiral Mutilius walking towards him with an angry glare. "Something I can help you with Admiral?".

"I don't know what you're playing at. And I don't know what you're doing. But I didn't fall for your little word play in there", she said, spitting out many of the words. "Make no mistake this is my fleet. If you needlessly endanger my men for your own personal gains, I will put a bullet through your head myself".

"Moves and countermoves, Mutilius, I'd sooner believe a suit rat would do such a thing. Just get your fleet ready to move, the transports are almost here".

50,000 men. That's how many soldiers he had under his control. This included a small contingent of Cabals. But was it enough? For a primitive mammalian species just lifting off into the cosmos? yes. Though, a little more wouldn't hurt. No harm in overkilling on troops. He knew where to get some as well.

He drew out his terminal from his wrist, and opened a new Extranet-Mail.

_Spectre Vasir_

_It has been a while since we last spoke, and I do believe you owed me a favour after our last little meeting. Depending on how many soldiers you have under your command, I may have an opportunity which is ripe for the picking, and could allow you to extend your I influence beyond just the borders of the Terminus..._

**Codex Entry: Drone Classifications**

Crusader  
The larger of the drone classifications, the Crusader is designated as a capital ship bomber, possessing a unique weapons complement of high yield flechettes. An interesting fact about the Crusader is its use in the first contact war. Due to its size and relatively low speed compared to torpedoes, a drone will often fly inside of the perimeter of a capital warships barriers and then fire all of its flechettes off, before switching to its spinal 40 millimetre rotary cannon to annoy the ship more than anything.

Ranger  
A small but incredibly versatile drone unit capable of operating for a short time in atmosphere, the Ranger possesses a high power ultra-violet laser and a pair of flechette launchers compatible with standard anti-capital ship missiles or anti-fighter missiles. They carry the same scale of armour as the Crusader but are much more manoeuvrable making them ideal to go toe-to-toe with council bombers or shuttles.

Samurai  
The samurai is an incredibly tough drone capable of engaging entire fighter swarms or single-handedly holding off a missile swarm. They do this using a pair of turreted 30 millimetre cannons with sophisticated tracking systems, and the capability to interface with their parent ship. While they are technically drones due to their lack of a pilot or any crew, they are often too large to be loaded into drone launchers and are instead dropped from the shuttle bay.

**Codex Entry: The Nature of Space Combat**  
Space is big, and space is boring. Those are two facts one must understand. The sheer amount of said space, is so large, that if you take the amount of stuff which constitutes as 'not space' and put it next to all of the stuff that is space, you'd get basically the same as you have now. Space. A more difficult concept to grasp, is that of orbits. Many times in sci fi, we see ships engaging well within visual range of each other. But if you did this, then you're either really lucky, or really stupid.  
Orbits are incredibly picky things, and just being half a meter per second slower can result in a massively different orbit which is not really fixable via correctional thrusters. So there are several ways to change your orbit. The first is velocity. Burning retrograde, means burning your engine against the direction of orbit. This lowers the opposite side of said orbit, and the lowest point of the orbit is what is called the Periapsis. On the other end, burning Prograde gives more velocity and raises the orbit, the highest point is the apoapsis.

You can also burn radial and anti-radial. This means burning away or towards the body you are orbit, this can be used to change the location of an orbit, or to escape from potentially dipping too low into an orbit quickly, this is not recommended as burning in these methods is often less efficient than burning retrograde or prograde. Finally is the inclination of an orbit, and this determines what a normal person calls the slant. For example, a satellite orbiting over both poles is basically at 90 degrees inclination, while one in an equatorial orbit is at 0 degrees inclination.

The first range at which space combat can take place is sensor range. This means both ships can see each other. Whether it is from radar, or passive sensors doesn't matter. At this range, it is often useless to fire, as the ships will be planets apart, and only long range missiles will be effective. In this case the Systems Alliance has two long range targeting missiles, the ISBM and the High Yield Missile Launcher. The ISBM or InterStellar Ballistic Missiles, carries a single use wormhole drive, and carries colossal warheads, while the missile launcher carries enough fuel to cross a system, just. Both missiles and ISBMs carry target prediction guidance, tracking and locking software, able to build a 3d scan of the target before comparing it to all known targets.

The second range is Torpedo and Drone range. This is an absolutely massive area, and is anywhere between 1000 and 1,000,000 kilometres in radius. At this range, the parent ship can gain accurate information on target locations with at worst a four second delay. Drones are used in conjunction with torpedoes in an attempt to destroy as many targets as possible. In this stage, both ships or fleets may not be in the same orbit, or even body, but torpedoes and drones must stage an intercept.

An intercept is where two objects pass within a relative hairs breadth of each other, however the window is tight. Many intercepts see relative velocities of thousands of meters per second, so complicated guidance systems are needed to reliably predict where a target will be. Here systems ships carry a trick up their sleeve. By networking the guidance systems of multiple torpedoes together, the swarm can more accurately predict where the enemy will be. If an object arranges an intercept where the orbits are matching, this is called a rendezvous, and is a much easier way to hit an enemy, but leaves you more vulnerable as well.

At 5000 kilometres, Council accelerators are commonly used along with disruptor torpedoes. This is because at long ranges, while a round will travel incredibly fast, a ship can still dodge. At 5000 kilometres both drones and torpedoes are still useful as at this close range, both ships will be either on an intercept, or a rendezvous. The next hurdle, is the 1000 kilometre range. Finally at this range railguns and coilguns are usable, as they lack a high speed projectile they are less accurate than their council counterparts. This makes the 1000 to 5000 kilometre range a preferred engagement range for council ships. As at this point torpedoes and drones no longer have the capabilities to be fired out, then perform a correctional burn, While potentially useful, they will more often than not fail to hit.

At the 5000 kilometre mark, two ships will be engaging in what the Humans call CQB or Close Quarter Battle. This is not the case for council ships, however if the range decreases to just 80 kilometres, a tiny range, then the ships will enter KFR or Knife Fight Range. At this point, humans will turn their high explosive propelled cannons towards enemy ships, and start firing their point defence cannons en mass. At this range the human ships will start firing Flechettes in order to overwhelm point defence fields, and council ships will fire their GUARDIAN lasers as both offensive and defensive weapons.

One interesting point is the use of a stealth ship. While the salarians make extensive use of stealth systems (almost half of all salarian frigates possess stealth systems), the Humans breathe it. Due to the much lower power signature of a nuclear reactor as opposed to eezo catalysed fusion or antimatter human ships are practically invisible to passive or even active sensors. And where the salarians rely on subterfuge and recon, the humans choose this time to strike. This is with the help of their [CLASSIFIED]class [CLASSIFIED], lethal ships which are barely understood.

I'm sorry for the very heavy amount of words devoted to codex. I realise this is where I went wrong with my last story, but some people have some serious misconceptions about how space combat worked. I realise many do not, but in mass effect they clearly state that visual range is considered dangerously close quarter combat, with deadly KFR engagements being rare. Yet in Mass Effect 3 the fleet waits until they can see the reapers to start firing. If I where an admiral with access to accelerators that can fire at percentages of light speed, I'd start firing from 1000 kilometres to the reapers. At the speed the guns fire at, the round would be there in less than a second. The supposed 1.3% that dreadnoughts fire at would barely be registered before it hit.


	4. CQB

"_Damn the Torpedoes, FULL SPEED AHEAD_", David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay

**SSV _Donnager_, _Zephyr_ class Cruiser**  
The torpedoes continued burn, straight for the _Donnager_. The enemy fleet had managed to fire their torpedoes slightly earlier in the fighting, and the torpedoes themselves had carried with them the velocity of their parent warships. So a lot. Newton was a real bitch when it came for ship-to-ship combat, as the _Donnager_ herself had been burning away from the unknowns which made her torpedoes slower than the others.

John wasn't really worried, he had spent several years in the infantry and in that time had been stationed on the SSV _Avenger_, the class prototype for the _Avenger_ class corvette. In that time they had fallen under attack from a pirate fleet, and the ship's PDCs had dealt with the torpedoes with no difficulty, before mulching the entire enemy fleet with the assistance of its PT boats. John had faith that a ship much larger could deal with the torpedo volley. Koris on the other hand, had his three-fingered hands clenched together as he stared at the console.

"You look nervous".

"I get that way when I have several salvos of torpedoes point at me. If any of them hit you can say good bye to your kinetic barriers".

"Don't worry, its nothing our PDCs and armour can't handle. I take it you aren't a soldier then?".

"I was an admiral in the quarian fleet. 50,000 ships scared off most pirates or slavers trying to get a shot at us, and the _Quib-Quib_ isn't... wasn't equipped for long range trips from the fleet".

"Most of my crew has never seen combat. Mainly simulations in virtual reality and the like".

"I take it you have", said Grissom.

She smiled slightly, but there was no warmness behind it. "I was onboard the _Stormbreaker_ during the Operation: Mosquito Net. Saw plenty of action as the lead of damage control. Then I got offered captaincy of the _Donnager_".

Before she could continue, one of the crewmembers announced out, "Torpedoes are 30 seconds from PDC range. Entering range of our drones".

As they passed the fleet of drones, several Rangers opened fire with their ballistic cannons, but at the relative velocity the drones and the torpedoes where travelling at, the Ranger failed to hit any, leaving the barrage completely untouched for the PDC network of the Freyja to deal with. As they crossed the 90 kilometre mark, the Point Defence Cannons finally opened fire on the torpedo barrage, their gyroscopic mounts keeping them each locked on a torpedo.

By now Grissom and the bridge crew where all secured in their crash couches, all except captain Yao, who stood behind the conn of the ship with the tactical display blinking red. The dull roar of cannons gave the ship a reverberation which felt like whenever the engines on the _Canterbury_ had been shaking too much. The guns themselves spat out their tungsten payloads at high velocity, and torpedo following torpedo fell to the cannons, exploding prematurely.

In the other fleet, the lasers onboard the vessels extended outwards and began firing on the torpedoes from the cruiser. However their angle of attack combined with their high approach speed meant the foreward frigate took 12 of the torpedoes directly to its hull. The ionised plasma split open the titanium armour, and began to melt the spine of the ship, stripping off metal, until the ship was left as just a boiling hot bulk of metal, where there used to be a warship.

"Splash one enemy frigate sir", announced sensors. To her left though, the XO began nervously pressing buttons and fiddling with his screen. "Is there a problem?".

"Their torpedoes aren't like our plasma ones, they're creating... some kind of singularities which pull debris into them before exploding". She nodded, but kept her stare fixed on the screen. Several of the Torpedoes struck the side of the engine mounts on the _Donnager_, but the lack of loose plating only served to detonate the singularities prematurely, leaving black scorch marks and several pits gouged into the armour.

One of the Torpedoes managed to sneak all the way to the rear, and hit between the engines. The resulting singularity was able to tear apart several metal plates, and the explosion broke apart several ablative layers and shook the entire ship. Causing Grissom to cringe as he shook in his chair.

"Impact on reactor 3 housing".

"Captain the enemy ships have left guided torpedo range, they're too close for torpedoes".

"Divert power to our CQB weapons. Primarily our Spinal railgun. We aren't going down without a fight". The woman smirked, "Aye sir, diverting power to the railguns for when they enter CQB".

The lights dimmed slightly, as the reactors redirected much of their electricity to the railgun capacitor banks, ready to fire. not exactly an action which instills confidence.

**Citadel Tower, Council Meeting**  
Councillor Valern was a Salarian. That meant his species was very quick and intelligent. This was reflected in how they fought their wars. A salarian believed that a war should be fought and won before it even started, so much of their entire military was built to operate and stand by these ideals. They certainly avoided brute force unlike the turians, and negotiations would almost certainly hit a brick wall in a lot of instances, leaving a gap between the two, which salarians filled quite nicely. Somehow the galaxy also seemed to lump them in as the scientific powerhouse of the galaxy as well. Not aware that much of the most advanced technology was asari by nature. But despite this, there was likely not an agency which knew quite as much as the Special Tasks Group.

Secrets where something that was dealt in heavily inside of the organisation. But the real key was using these secrets in the correct way. For Example, Valern knew for a fact that Councillor Sparatus was having affairs with at least two others aside from his wife. Exposing this wouldn't help him at all currently. It might weaken the galaxies impression of the turian councillor, but it wouldn't help his own race much except weaken their link with the military powerhouse of the galaxy. But keeping it as a secret, would allow a trump card should the turian ever need to be 'convinced' to carry out an action which would have an effect on the union.

One thing, which the STG did not know, is why the turians where mobilising, and that fact annoyed Valern to no end. It had something to do with the quarians, he knew that much. The police action taken against the migrant fleet after their... incursion was a bitter pill to talk of with the deep hatred Sparatus seemed to hold for the migrant fleet. Might be how Admiral Gerrel stole one of his race's cruisers. But the amount of ships being mobilised was odd. If they where trying to stop the migrant fleet, then a pair of fleets would do fine, but the entire military? Something didn't add up, and without all of the evidence, Valern found himself in an unamountably frustrating space in between knowing nothing and having a full scope on the situation. Hopefully this meeting would shed a little light on the subject.

As he entered he noted that the Asari Councillor had once again managed to gain huge bags under her magenta eyes, indicative of a lack of sleep. It wasn't surprising really, the councillor was likely the most level headed among them. But in this instant she just looked like she was staying up late to finish reports or try and negotiate with certain planets. "Tevos is there a reason you called, I have a full workload today", he heard from behind. This threw up alarm bells inside Valern's mind, until now the quarian crisis had been only a secondary concern, but one of the things that the STG did know, was Sparatus' dealings, and supposedly today he had cleared his schedule early. This meant either the turian was having a day to relax, or he was doing things which the other councillors did not approve on. And one particular stickling point between Tevos and Sparatus was the quarians.

"I'd just like to discuss what you intend to do about the actions of the quarians recently, so do take a seat", she said, softly. Sparatus grumbled as he did so, and Valern was silent throughout the exchange. "Very well Tevos. What is it you want to know".

"Can I just ask what the quarians did to warrant the pulling of Patrol Fleet 12?".

"You know exactly what they did. They attempted to colonize Ike, we attempted to negotiate with them to leave, but they turned their guns on us. I pulled the 12th Patrol Fleet because I felt that it was necessary to bring one of the s- Quarian Admiralty Board in".

She brought up a 3d figure. A cylindrical ship larger than a corvette, but smaller than frigate. "So you destroyed two of their... ships for no reason".

He angrily folded his arms, "they opened fire on Arterius and where tampering with a mass relay. All three of us are aware that opening a mass relay is completely illegal and ought to be punished to dissuade civilians from attempting to do the same".

Tevos pushed the emitter over with a slight degree of anger in her actions. "Sparatus the Quarians will not simply roll over due to force, and they will certainly not respond well to you kidnapping one of their admirals".

He let out a bark of laughter at that, "Kidnapping? I'm am carrying out a lawful arrest as sanctioned by the Citadel Charter".

"You destroyed 12 of their frigates over Ike, then killed two more ships when they where tampering with a mass relay".  
Sparatus rolled his eyes in a very childish way, "Because they killed our soldiers on the ground. Dozens where slaughtered by the so-called honourable quarian marine core. I simply saw it fit to hold the overseer of the operation and associates accountable".

She looked to Valern, who was silent throughout the exchange, carefully watching Sparatus. Cataloguing his actions against whether or not he was bluffing. "And I suppose the fact that a single Heavy Corvette disabled one of your frigates is another thing you will hold accountable".

Sparatus spluttered out his next words, obviously surprised that Tevos had managed to find this out. "Wha, How?!".

"You should know by now I am fully aware of when you send damaged ships to the Citadel Dockyards. And that ship was barely functioning. So clearly the quarians proved my point".

Sparatus recomposed himself before answering, "The damage of the frigate, while an unfortunate happening was a one-off event. I do not intend to allow the quarians to do such a thing again".

Tevos regarded the man carefully, "I hope you don't mean what I suspect you mean Sparatus".

"I'm a lawful man Tevos, I'm not a murderer, it will be up to the quarians if they want to surrender or not. But my troops will not hesitate to defend themselves".  
Valern nodded carefully, he didn't want to throw off the Asari Councillor, she might know something they didn't, like the exact model of the quarian ship which had almost gutted a turian assault frigate, an impressive task all things considered. "As long as this 'defending themselves' doesn't turn into needless slaughter, I will not question your actions any further until you have the Admiralty Board in custody. But...".

She ended with a clipped tone, halting Sparatus' actions in attempting to leave, "If you endanger the lives of any civilian, no matter the species, may I remind you of section four of the Treaty of Farixen". Once again Sparatus rolled his eyes, "Of course Councillor. Now if you will excuse me I have things to do".

He left quickly, still holding the 3-dimensional model of the starship. What particularly caught the salarian's notice was the lack of defining features. It looked exactly like early salarian spaceships. Cylindrical and utilitarian in nature, as was the requirements before element zero. He could certainly see why someone under a combat situation might think it was a Quarian ship.

But it wasn't, the insignia on the side didn't match any known quarian clan markings or their usual flag. He would feed it into the database just to be sure. But the blue arch with several stars below it didn't strike him as quarian.

Something didn't add up, and he would find out what.

**SSV _Donnager_, _Zephyr_ class Cruiser**  
The entire starship rotated round with no difficulty, angling its main gun towards the enemy. A slight glow appeared from the central barrel which ran up the spine of the railgun. Sparks began to leap from rail to rail, and an eight kilogram tungsten slug entered with barely a meter per second worth of velocity, before leaving the barrel at a speed which would have broken orbit on earth. The slug dashed through the space for roughly 7 seconds, before slamming into the one of the frigates. Thanks to the previous onslaught of torpedoes which had brought down one frigate, the kinetic barriers where already weakened to a point where they may as well have not been there. The blunt slug perforated through the frontal armour plates, jolting the entire ship. As it continued through, it tore through several decks, before striking the main fuel tank to the rear. The fuel began to leak out from the storage tank into the now overloading reactor, and a blue explosion, as powerful as a new-born star, lit up the sky to all those who glanced in its direction.

Debris projected in every direction, clunking off of the barriers of the nearby ships but they didn't halt their attack by a single second, and rotated slightly, before quickly firing their own mass accelerators, sending out 4 slugs in less than two seconds. On the CIC of the _Donnager_, all was fairly calm until the entire ship jerked, and a new alarm announced itself. "Sir, they've got accelerators! But I've never seen ones that fire this fast". Once again the ship shook. "Crap our armour is doing nought. Those things just ignore it and go in one end and out the other". Koris looked to Grissom, who gave a nervous smile in retaliation.

In the brig of the Donnager, the prisoners felt the impact far more than the folks on CIC, as they where nearer where the rounds where piercing them. The quarians where looking more terrified than ever, and one looked like he was hyperventilating, as he was rapidly shaking and struggling in his restraints. Faunz, who was in the left most corner, turned to Jayne and asked, "What in the name of the ancestors is going on".

Jayne answered quickly, "They're firing the railguns". A different sound, which was much more like a heavy gun battery firing. A dull, melodic thumping which shook the ship each time. "And the coilguns. But that means we're in CQB".

"CQB? You mean KFR right".

"No I mean Close Quarter Battle, but why the hell is a pirate group engaging the Donnie at CQB. It's a suicide mission!". One of the quarians, a young woman in a dark black suit was oddly calm as she said in an uncertain accent reminiscent of American. "It's not pirates, its the turians, they found us". Kaylee, who was hunkered in the middle of the room looking more concerned than scared, asked "How do you know".

She held her hand up, "Listen". They did. The banging noises as metallic slugs struck their ship once again announced itself. But it was in a pattern. Two quick bangs, followed by a pause, then two more and another pause. The process repeated itself 6 times, before there was a long pause. "Turian Assault Frigates fire their accelerator batteries in quick succession. They can fire each battery in a two round burst 8 times before it needs vent thermal energy".

Jayne, who was staring with awe, managed to ask, "How do you know that?".

She shrugged, "I served on the _Iktomi_ in the fleet. A retired turian assault frigate. It had the same batteries as the modern version". She was interrupted when a particularly nasty hit followed her words, the room shaking once again. This particular hit sent shockwaves all the way up to the main CIC, where Theresa had grabbed the table to steady herself. "Crap. The portside battle cannon just took an accelerator round, actuators are down, its dead". Announced the damage control officer.

"Engineering reports a direct hit on antimatter storage 5, they managed to vent it, but they lost 3 crewmen to the explosion".

Koris was muttering to himself, before turning to Grissom and saying, "This is not how I intend to die. What the hell is happening". Grissom didn't get a chance to reply as Yao moved towards the sensors station. "I want ID's, we need to know their capabilities".

"Sir, there's nothing in Alliance or Freelancer records. No IFFs, no weapons nothing".

"Scan them. I want detailed drive imagery and 3d models including possible weapons hardpoints on every one!". He fiddled with several buttons, before an image of the ship appeared. It was about 350 meters long, shaped like a bird, with a central section which stretched down the length of the ship attached to two square protrusions which where the main drives, oddly small for a ship of its size. An actuated wing extended either side of the ship, both of which holding an accelerator battery.

"That... that ship". Half of the bridge crew within earshot turned to Koris, who was staring with abject horror at the console. "It's... its a turian assault frigate, _Vaktyr_ class".

Theresa stepped towards the quarian very carefully. "You know the design?".

He nodded, "Its a model used by the heirarchy. That drive signature, that IFF. They're all Turian. And if they're here, then-".

"KORIS!". She snapped to the captain. "Do you know the capabilities?".

He shook his head, "I don't know, but if they're here, then the rest of the fleet can't be far behind".

Outside of the hull of the _Donnager_, two of the frigates strayed too close to the ship, and every single point defence cannon on the ship turned their attention to the ships, cutting them down. The dorsal battle cannon in particular rotated and fired two rounds, which exploded against the hull, unimpeded by its now non-existent kinetic barriers. The high explosives completely blew apart the ship, and the other frigate was left a floating husk, having had its bridge pierced by several thousand PDC rounds.

"Scratch three and four!".

A massive shockwave shook the _Donnager_, the entire world felt like it was exploding as sparks shot out from the ceiling panels. One of the marines stumbled as the deck shook again, and the lights shut off for a moment. "Sir reactor 3 just lost power to an electromagnet and-". He didn't get a chance to continue, as an even bigger shockwave rippled out. Outside the _Donnager_. Her midship reactor experienced a minor containment breach, but the resulting rush of air from a nearby high pressure oxygen tank detonated the entire reactor, tearing the ship in half. The lack of engines caused a distinct lack of gravity, clearly labelled as such when the legs of the quarians and humans in the brig began to slowly levitate.

"Well shit, looks like the engines are offline".

"Engines? What the fuck does that have to do with the gravity".

Jayne fixed the smartassed quarian who had opened his mouth with a glare, explaining "We didn't have magic on our ships. We get gravity the hard way. Spinning or thrust, so apologies if we don't live up to your standards".

"How can you not have artificial gravity, it's the first thing our people found with element zero", said the same marine, struggling in his restraints.

"Because we didn't get any goddamn magic dust! So shut your fuckin' mouth".

Simon, who had unclipped his restraints, was now activating his mag boots, and clamped down onto the hull. "Okay, I think we should all just take a deep breath, and f-".

The speed of sound is a funny thing. In a planetary atmosphere or a large enough space station, an object exceeding that limit will create a sonic boom as pressure waves from the sound built up on the nose. In a confined space, generally the waves did not propagate at all, as it took barely a quarter of a second to pass through space. When the accelerator round entered the room, embedding itself in the far wall, the only sound was a heavy metallic clunk. An accelerator round travelled at such velocity that there was no warning. Of course that wasn't the problem, the round was only a few centimetres wide, leaving a similar sized hole. It would be patched easily. The problem was resistance between the wall the slug entered and the wall behind. Specifically, the round had intersected with Simon's cranium. Removing it.

**Codex Entry: Weapon Descriptions**

PDC Classifications  
30 millimetre CIWS - An effective anti-missile weapon, the CIWS grid of larger warships will generally carry a greater number of 30 millimetre guns as opposed to the far larger and more powerful 40 millimetre cannons. This is because the 30 millimetre models are far better at intercepting missiles due to their greater fire rate and turret rotational speed. Despite this, they are much less effective against warships.

40 millimetre CEPDC - A brutal weapon at the very pinnacle of Knife Fight Range combat effectiveness, the Coilgun Enhanced cannons fire Teflon coated tungsten rounds en mass. While their fire rate and tracking capabilities are less effective than that of 30 millimetre Close In Weapons Systems, they are brutally effective against warships at close range. Smaller ships carry more of these as many lack railguns or coilguns.

Missile Classifications  
Flechettes - Loaded either in full or half batteries, flechettes are tiny short range missiles designed to circumvent close range defensive systems, or draw fire away from starships. A half battery can fire 8 flechettes at a time and a full battery 16. A flechette battery can only really be used at CIWS range due to the lack of fuel, however they hoist this advantage above torpedo systems which made ships like the Avenger class effective anti-frigate weapons during the first contact war, as flechettes do not set off kinetic barriers due to their low-mass, low-speed profile. Only much weaker anti-debris kinetic barriers are able to stop them.

Torpedoes - An effective and simple measure of a fleet's combat ability, is its torpedo complement and ability to launch them. Unlike missiles which carry their own guidance systems, torpedoes carry only limited IR sensor guidance and rely mostly on scans and target locks provided by the parent ship. While high end versions do contain advanced 3d scanning mechanisms, they are more expensive per unit and are reserved for ships such as [CLASSIFIED] class [CLASSIFIED] and [CLASSIFIED] class [CLASSIFIED].

Missiles - A missile is very different from a torpedo, as once launched, it can guide itself to the target using very powerful laser ranging, radar, lidar and scans provided by a mothership. A missile will carry a much larger warhead than a torpedo, but some carry cluster warheads which can each mount torpedo class missiles. Combined with the fact that certain torpedoes mount flechette warheads, and you have effective CIWS confusion missiles which can blanket a defence system, or blanket a city.

ISBMs - Interstellar Ballistic Missiles are rarer missiles generally reserved for very specific strikes against very specific targets. Carrying enough antimatter to flash-create a wormhole for a single jump, the several stage missile will be pre-programmed with a target and sent on its way. Once the jump is complete, the missile will use a plasma thruster to intercept its target, before shutting down its main drive and entering a stealth mode in which it is nearly undetectable. With a much lower variety on a missile to missile basis (Either nuclear or cluster) they are only usually found on dedicated [CLASSIFIED]. Rumours that certain ships carry cluster-ISBMS, themselves with cluster-missiles, themselves with cluster-torpedoes, themselves with flechette warheads are wildly exaggerated. We think. And hope.

Cannon Batteries  
There are many types of cannon batteries presently in use with the Alliance, and listing each ones relevant information is included in a specific document about these primitive weapons, so below is just a basic description of individual types, their uses and the known models present on alliance warships.  
Coilguns - The most outwardly similar cannons to our own mass accelerators, coilguns use solenoids of hyper-cooled superconductors to accelerate high-density magnetic rounds to high velocity. The main advantage these have over their railguns is their lower maintenance requirements and higher fire rate, however compared to railguns they have much higher power requirements, and are not as effective.

Models include (Model Number, Nickname, Size): FT-6 Longbow Medium Coilgun, FT-8 'Crossbow' Rapidfire Coilgun, FT-12 'Ballistae' Heavy Coilgun, XT-18 'Trebuchet' Super-heavy Coilgun

Battle Cannon - An intimidating name for a brutally primitive weapon. These are only used in hyper-close range engagements of dozens of kilometres, but are completely ignored by standard kinetic barriers due to their speed. While no official names exist for the smoothbore cannons present, there are four variants we are aware of in use, these are measured in millimetres for barrel width including 220, 280, 320 and 360 millimetre barrel diameters, with each size firing a larger and larger shell. One Human described them as 'the same cannons onboard the Bismark, just polished off'.

Railguns - Military railguns, while having higher maintenance costs and greater power requirements due to their immense size, are even more damaging than coilguns due to the high mass projectiles in use by human battlegroups. In particular, the recommendation is that the more railguns a ship has, the lower likelihood of victory in CQB or KFR engagements. While we have included the relevant details with regards to approximate weapon sizes below, we have not yet determined the specifics of each gun as they remain a closely guarded secret.

AES Series Railguns often fire a single depleted uranium alloy slug. Very effective at armour piercing and breaking apart kinetic barriers. This includes but may not be limited to: 195 'Bismark' Light Railguns, 208 'Arizona' Medium Railguns, 211 'Belfast' Heavy Railguns and 280 'Kirov' Super-Heavy Railguns.

BAE Systems Railguns use number classifications with lower numbers having higher yields. Shells of these railguns are either tungsten slugs or iron rounds which fragment before they hit the target, increasing the probability of hitting a critical system. The only two models in use by the military we think, are the 'Zako-Sitara' Type 95 Heavy Railguns and 'Foehammer' Type 65 Ultra-Heavy Railguns.


	5. Update

Hi guys, it's me the Atomicsub.. M which you already new.

So basically... My laptop got nuked. Not really, my laptops broken though and I'm beigg forced to type this from my phone. I apologise for the delay, both Morrigan Effect and on HTTYD Battlefront. I'm trying to get it fixed but it's going to mean uploads are slower for the next few weeks while I get it repaired. Of you're interested, I'm doing a small YouTube series om both books just to give you some more detailed stats on ship classes. Both Morrigan Effect and HTTYD Battlefront.

My YouTube channel is ViggoGrimborn927 if you're interested and I hope you guys enjoy it. Anyway that's all for this week. Sorryyyy


	6. Detonation Point

**Sorry I'm late! My laptop broke so I have to type this from my little sisters rubbish laptop. First world problems at its maximum. Thankfully my new laptop arrives tomorrow so I should be back to somewhat stability.**

* * *

"_War is an inherently unstable interaction between three things. Politics, Intense Emotion, and Luck. That message was luck. Maybe out here, away from all of the politics and bullshit, luck is the catalyst that lets a couple of grunts figure out how not to fight_", Rear Admiral Jubil Sarkis, United States of North America, USS Demolisher, Near end of World War III.

* * *

**Arcturus Station**

Admiral Hackett was many things. Those who served under him would call him an inspiring mentor. Those who had fought alongside him, a genius tactician. Those who knew him would call him a tough SOB. For the current moment, the entire Arcturus command sector knew him as the guy who was at present... angrily marching toward Lieutenant Felix Gaeta. "Lieutenant Gaeta! Where's my report on the SSV _Donnager_?".

The man jumped slightly, and rose quickly. "Sir it's chaos, our last report that the Donnie had picked up contacts is well beyond considered wrong, and Shanxi have informed us via the network that the _Donnager_ reported it was facing an attack from unknown warships. Their last communication reads like this: ". He said, gathering up a paper report. One might have thought that he could bring an onscreen report, but paper was still commonly used among the alliance.

"Captain Theresa Yao reports that the _Donnager_ has engaged unknown targets which may be jamming communications by this time. We have confirmation that the _Canterbury_ was destroyed by enemy forces with an unpredictable agenda, and Captain Yao has also informed us they have taken 4 humans and 5 aliens prisoner".

Hackett drew both hands up to his face and rubbed furiously into his sleep deprived eyes. The situation was now rapidly deteriorating. "Oh fucking hell. inform Shanxi to move to condition one and inform the parliament now. I have to meet with the president and the chancellor for the Chinese Congressional Republic to explain why one of their ships isn't reporting in". Gaeta nodded, and turned to get back to his work, while Hackett stood for a moment and stared out of the window at a distant starship. Judging by the shape, he estimated it was the SSV _Typhoon_, the _Stormbreaker_ class Battleship attached to the fifth fleet defending Arcturus.

"Lieutenant can you order the Arcturus fleet to condition three please and order all fleets to do the same. As of this moment, Spring Protocol is in effect". The man nodded dutifully and Hackett made a mental note to recommend Gaeta for a promotion, he had been nothing but helpful in keeping the incursion to himself, but now it was over. The secret was out. Shanxi knew, so did the president. While the parliament was not yet aware, the senior council knew and where preparing to convene in Toronto.

Chancellor Zhiang-Zho Hong had already been on Arcturus to discuss the recent decommissioning of the SSV _Liu Bei_, but ever since hearing about the _Donnager_, he had clearly changed his agenda. In fact, the short but stocky balding Chinese man was stood right outside the command centre, smiling a broad smile at the Admiral. Hackett had always liked Zhiang, he was much less of a politician than the others, but was still calm and friendly.

"Chancellor Zhiang, how have you been".

"I have been good Admiral Hackett, would it be possible if you could explain why one of my ships went missing?". Aside from English, the other main language of the Alliance was Mandarin, due to its prevalence. Everywhere you went, practically everyone was at least versed in English or Mandarin. Shanxi was a Republican Colony, making its defence fleet under the Republic. Its full name was the Republic of China, India and other South East Asian Nations, or RSEAN. The RSEAN had been the second largest sponsor for the initial Artemis missions responsible for the first moon base, Luna 1.

"Chancellor we are working as diligently as we can in an attempt to find why the _Donnager_ has not yet reported in, however we have received... well I wont sugar-coat it, we have received terrifying news". Zhiang looked startled by the news, "Admiral I'm afraid I don't understand".

"We received a communication from Shanxi. Apparently as of 4 hours ago... the _Donnager_ has engaged what we can only describe as unidentified starships which we believed are of extra-terrestrial origin".

As if the poor man wasn't startled enough, when Hackett mentioned the origin, Zhiang looked around before leaning in and asking, "What are your plans with regard to the rest of the representatives, surely they would like to know as well, especially if their own colonies are at risk, heaven knows what happens if Udina of UCNA or Cox of URDF gets wind of this?".

He removed a cue card from his pocket, "I've called a meeting with the representatives of the twelve nations, along with several military advisers and scientific leads in their respective communities, we aren't facing a threat like this with just the RSEAN navy, that's for sure".

Zhiang nodded, looking relieved and they began to talk and walk on their way down one of Arcturus' many hallways towards the conference centre. "And what actions are you taking to ensure the safety of Shanxi?".

"Total evacuation to the bunkers. Activating the reserves and recalling the patrol fleet. If ET comes knockin' with his gun pointed out he ain't leaving without some serious burns of his own".

"I hope it does not that come to that Admiral, now I will leave you to contact the representatives, there is a phone call I must make". And with that, the RSEAN Representative left Hackett to his own devices, heading for a private conference room, and leaving him to deal with the others. As he entered, he noticed that Cox and Udina where already connected and sat with sullen expressions. Donnel Udina was representing the United Colonies of North America and was an arrogant, unpleasant man who was too short and stubby to ever fit in with the vast majority of his people who found homes on asteroid mining stations and starships. Samuel Cox was an eastern European from Belarus on old earth with american parents, making him the only one in the council from the homeworld. He was the main representative for the Russian Democratic Federation.

As he entered, Udina said with his typical sneer, "Admiral Hackett why did you call this meeting, I have tasks I was in the middle of". Yeah like screwing your mistress, Hackett added silently. What he actually said was, "I can assure you that this announcement is more important than any other news before. Even more important than the discovery of the FTL drive".

As he finished, a crackle lit up the far right screen, and Thomas Singleton, representing the Atlantean Defence Initiative appeared. He was a fairly unremarkable human, but his stark white and silver suit emblazoned with the insignia of the ADI shimmered in the lamplight he was using. The ADI was a defence initiative of loose states including the UK, Ireland, Canada, Norway and Switzerland. Their main founding role had been for protection against the UCNA during the Third World War, but they had shaped up to be technological gurus, making them the main driving force behind the discovery of the Wormhole drive.

He nodded respectably as he presumably saw Hackett, and said nothing. Choosing to instead lean slightly back in his seat. Behind him, a few of the scientists and engineers he had called shuffled in. Not being a part of the military they did not stop talking and salute when they saw him, just manoeuvred to a set of chairs in the corner of the room and sat down. On the screen in front three more figures flickered on. A tall woman wearing a beautifully decorated garb and fabric robe with deep black hair and several earrings. A well-dressed man in a black suit and white shirt but no tie. And the suit had gold highlights. Next to him was a New Zealander dressed in a blue uniform. Obviously these where Chrisjen Apeloko, representative of the African Congressional Republic, Jose Amazonia of the Union of Southern American Nations and finally was Michael Cree of the South Pacific Coalition. All wore similar expressions as they awaited for Hackett to begin his meeting.

The other representatives for the European Union, the Attican Star Congress, Outer Colonial Alliance, Colonies of Kobol and the New Terran Union. The only two representatives not present were from the Osean Federation, and the kingdom of Erusea, who were both unreachable. All were awaiting him onscreen. Behind him, he heard light footsteps as Laura entered. She was dressed in her usual presidential suit with the seal of the Systems Alliance. She gave a slight smile to both Hackett and Adar (the representative for the Colonies of Kobol) before taking her own position in the presidential chair. "Members of the council we have some grave news from Shanxi".

He took a deep breath before explaining the situation with the _Canterbury_ and the missing PT Boats. Throughout the entire explanation, the council was silent, not interrupting. When he finally arrived at the communication from the _Donnager_ Udina decided to interrupt. "Under attack from unknown ships? Sounds just like a pirate fleet to me Steven".

Before he could reply, Chrisjen's commanding voice escaped the screen. "It's obviously not pirates Udina, or it'd have reported back by now. Continue please Hackett".

Unfazed by Udina's interruption, he continued. "The _Donnager_ sent a communication 1 hour ago through a comm buoy to Shanxi, which bounced the signal off of the Alpha-78 comm buoy. The latency to the ship adds another 4 hours, so we can assume the battle is already complete. Depending on the _Donnie's_ effectiveness, we likely won't be hearing from them for another hour or so. But that isn't the largest problem on our hands". He brought up another screen. "The crew of the _Donnager_ was able to recover 9 crewmembers from the _Canterbury_. Well 4. The other 5 are... extra-terrestials".

The room stayed calm for roughly 2 seconds. Then all hell broke loose.

* * *

**SSV _Donnager_, _Zephyr_ class Cruiser**

The explosion had shaken him to his core. It didn't sound like anything else and John did not want to consider what happened. Theresa however, very carefully walked towards the XO's system and asked, "What the fuck was that?".

"Uhh, well bad news is that reactor three exploded. Good news, we're still flying half a ship". The ship rocked again, but then everything fell silent. "What the hell!?", muttered John.

"The frigates are matching our orbit. They're also approaching at roughly 30 meters per second". Theresa managed to fill in the blanks herself. "They're boarding us. XO! Prepare to engage Mckinley Protocol". From his station, the short woman dressed in his blues was stood with a tablet. He pressed the button several times, bringing up a simple bio-scanner. "Self-destruct is ready sir". Theresa nodded approvingly, before turning to the comms station. "Order who we have to begin focusing defence around the hangar bay, brig and CIC. What's the status on the escape pods?".

The damage control officer slid across several screens. Most of the cylindrical pod interfaces where red. "Barely 10% of the forward pods are functioning, but C3-42 is fully functional". She pursed her lips. "Order the force recon marines to take our guests to the PT boat and get them back to Arcturus ASAP". She then turned back to the XO. "Get all non-essential personnel into the escape pods".

The XO nodded before gesturing for the marine behind him to move forward, and he pulled both him and Koris up. "You two follow me". Not given much of a choice, John was pulled away from the CIC alongside Koris.

In the brig, silence reigned as Simon's body swayed backwards. Completely unaffected by gravity. The quarian who had been hyperventilating only started struggling more, and Kaylee broke out of her crash couch. "We need to plug the holes!". She said, gesturing to the circular divot in the side of the room. It was barely several centimetres wide, and air was being sucked out at a surprising rate. The train of blood which was now spurting from Simon's body was being sucked in a long line through the hole, and Kaylee grabbed the emergency patch kit from its holder before passing metal sheets and glue guns around.

Jayne grabbed his, and grimaced as he came to the hole which had caused Simon's demise. Attaching the metal sheet, he then attached a long layer of glue around the panel, before the air finally stopped venting from the gap. A check revealed no other penetrations. They where safe for now. But that wasn't the main issue. They were stuck, in a ship which had at the very least lost power to its thrusters. And now they were dangerously low on oxygen if the dials on the wall told him anything.

"Leah?". Jayne turned around to see the quarian just staring at where Simon's body was still hanging loosely. Her eyes where blank, and she was breathing quicker. He waved a hand in front of her, she didn't even blink. "She's in shock. Someone help her up!". As they all attempted to comfort the completely unresponsive girl, Jayne was struggling to figure out a way out of the prison cell. Besides him was Reegar, and the quarian who recognised the assault ships, a young lieutenant called Daro'Xen vas Moreh. "Okay, so.. just to recap. We're trapped in a sinking warship under attack from unknown ships which completely circumvented the defence grid. Any ideas".

Reegar perked up, "We could hack our way out, try to circumvent the door's defences". Jayne shook his head, "No can do. Door isn't connected to a computer system, its an old fashioned mechanical lock".

Xen, who until now had a hand folded underneath her chin, asked, "What about trying to cut through the doors?".

Jayne facepalmed. "You see anything we can cut with in here?".

She pointed to the vents, "We could use the oxygen from the vents and our suits hydrogen fuel cells to cut through". Reegar clicked his fingers, "That's a good idea. After that we find our way to the shuttle bay and commandeer a corvette, or something".

"We might be able to get to the ventral escape pods from here. How much hydrogen do your suits have?".

"A few kilograms in each. All together it should be enough to enlarge one of the holes from the accelerator rounds", said Xen. "Okay, lets-"

"Wait...", said Reegar, holding up both hands. "They've stopped firing". Everyone shut up, and surely enough... silence. "Why the hell aren't the PDCs firing?".

"Or the turian ships. Unless...". The turians may have been unknowable alien threats to all of their lives, but even Jayne could predict exactly what was going on. "We're being boarded. Shit if that's happening then they'll detonate the antimatter reserves".

"Antimatter!? You keep antimatter on your ships!?". Jayne rolled his eyes, "Yeah keep up Reegar. Anyway, we need to get moving, no-". A loud bang. A clank. Followed by the sound of grating metal. They all spun round, where the door was slowly shifting. "Crap! Defensive positions everyone". Of course, defensive positions meant nothing to them, and literally just resulted in them waiting with arms in a fighting stance, and with Kaylee behind them and Leah.

Jayne leapt forward, his fist flying out to meet the face of the first intruder... Who took the full force hit and spun him round. But within a moment he found himself on the ground, with a growling dragon in his face, whose throat was still glowing a dim red. "Jayne, what the fuck was that for, you punched me you bastard!". Despite the situation, Jayne almost choked when he saw a massive bruise covering Grissoms head. "Sorry Cap, thought you were ET".

Cowell from earlier, was outside with his dragon at his knees. Both were staring down the corridor with a weapon in hand. Jayne recognised it as an MP45 Heavy Assault Rifle. They were coilgun tubes duct taped to assault rifles, and their massive cost per unit made them a design primarily in use for special forces. Jayne had only ever had access to the SA80 rifles in small arms lockers. "If we could break apart your reunion, we do have a cruiser to get the hell off". He the tossed them several packages. "Get these EVA suits on, the Hangar is completely in vac"

With practiced ease, Jayne slid the Kevlar suit over his clothes, and fastened the connections. Xen and one of the other quarians passed a suit to Kaylee, who slowly put it on, as though not really being present. What about the aliens?".

Koris, who looked positively unsure of himself, pointed to his own suit. "Our suits are insulated against vacuum, 300 years in space was useful for something".

Briggs just stared at the tightly fitted suit, which looked flimsier than a torpedo boat with a hull breach, before muttering 'Your funeral pal". As they finished, the hiss of the suits sealing mechanisms where the only sound, except the gentle padding of the mechs around the corridor. Briggs raised his SA80 towards the corridor before moving forward, dragon (John had gotten fed up of using the so clearly made acronym) at his heels. As they moved through dark, unlit corridors and came up on a metal reinforced door, Briggs and Cowell both raised little canisters, one was painted yellow, the other a dim crimson.

"Grenade out!". The door was opened slightly, and the yellow canister was thrown in. A muffled bang, followed by the clicking of a safety pin followed this and John cringed as muffled screams followed this. As the two special forces operatives entered they fired their weapons indiscriminately, slaughtering the weird metal aliens who where now laid on the floor, dead. There where 8 in total and they had been busy as well, judging by the multitude of human bodies on the floor. None had combat armour or weaponry, they where engineers by the looks of things.

The images reminded John of an old documentary he had seen about the first Interstellar war, when the very first war in space had occurred. Humanity had been ill-prepared for its first war among the stars and it had shown. Many times battles had been fought just above colonies, resulting in millions of stray PDC rounds and rail-gun slugs slamming into colonies.

The scenes of innocent civilians being slaughtered ruthlessly had led to the introduction of the 'Anderson' shelter. A cheaply produced underground habitat unit lined with steel armour and able to resist PDC rounds and able to survive aerial assault bombs, or cannon shells. To a limited extent.

"May I ask captain what do the flags on their armour mean?", he heard Koris ask. Looking at their armour, John spotted the blue and red flag with a rising wave on Briggs shoulder. "The blue and red signifies the seal of the Atlantean Defence Initiative, just one of the many factions which make up humanity.

"It symbolises the ADI, one of the major nations from humanity".

"You mean just like an influential family?".

"Kinda, I mean our factions tend to span a few dozen star systems most of the time, and has dozens to hundreds of starships under their wing".

Koris raised his helmeted head slightly. "Fascinating... and what about that one?, he said, pointing to a deep orange flag made up of a rotating aperture with stars in the centre. "That represents the Kingdom of Erusea, another faction. He then noticed the star on the bottom half which had a red outline. "The red star signifies the specific planet they're from. The bottom star is... Voslage I believe?".

Cowell interrupted, "It signifies Belka not Voslage. Voslage is the one on the right".

"Ahh apologies, I had trouble placing your accent".

Sounding offended, he ignored Grissom and reloaded his rifle. "Most outsiders can't. It's too similar to the Shilagean accent to be considered Belkan". As they came to a black airlock which read 'Hangar Bay', Briggs turned round. "When we breach, you make a run for PT-A7H. Don't stop running no matter what". And with that, Briggs and Cowell climbed on their robotic companions, who drew low to the ground like a panther stalking its prey, their wings folded but looking ready to flare. "3..."

A pad beeped and flashed green, as the doors lock changed.

"2..."

Cowell and Briggs both raised grenades.

"1..."

The door popped open and several things happened. The two grenades rolled out and immediately activated, thrusters carrying them forward before they exploded, sending metal shards in all directions. The mecs blasted away from the doors in a blast which shook the area, and began flapping around in the zero gravity environment with surprising grace, firing shots from their micro-railguns towards the now prevalent flashes of gunfire.

_Here goes nothing._

And he started to run.

* * *

**Codex Entry: Systems Alliance Government**

The systems alliance is a representative democracy made of several parts which are designed to operate in a way which allows the ideals of a republic to be represented while still allowing the individual factions some level of independence, and so as to not limit nations with regards to their abilities.

The first section is the Parliament. This is made up of a large number of representatives each a part of a settlement on a colony. For this reason colonies can have multiple settlements, for example the largest number is Terra Nova, or New Terra. Due to the 28 different settlements on its surface, there are 28 representatives. This is followed closely by Earth at 26 and the total number of representatives for the parliament numbers at 800.

Secondly is the Council of Nations. This is made up of the representatives for the factions which provide the funding for the Systems alliance which allows a united military force. While each faction has its own standing military forces the systems alliance military has jurisdiction anywhere and is far larger than that of their own forces.

The third and final section is high council. Making up the main governing body, the high council is composed of the President and her advisors, the Admiralty Board for the alliance military and the managing directors for each department such as the department of health, department of colonisation. All three parts are voted in by the people, and so far this has kept corruption down to a fairly safe level. That is not to say it does not exist however.

The present nation holding the role of leading the federation is the United Colonies of Kobol with President Laura Roslin. The previous leaders hailed from the United Colonies of North America, the Russian Federation, and the Osean Federation. Once Laura Roslin has finished her term, the leading role of the alliance will be handed onto the Kingdom of Erusea. Erusea's current leader, Georg D'elise oversaw the famous lighthouse agreement and his daughter, Rosa Cossette D'elise is among the most influential people within the Alliance.

**Quick authors note, I'd like to thank my onsite friend Blaze1992 for all the help he's been in my own realisations that certain plot or science holes do exist and I will be filling them as seen in future codex sections.**


	7. Charge Assault

**Started writing this chapter with a major hangover and a sprained wrist. Had no less than four breakdowns, bon appetite.**

* * *

"_Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege_" - Joseph Stalin

* * *

**Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alerei, _QMV Alerei_**  
The leader of the entire quarrian fleet, hero of the battle of Duna, and the present inspiration for so many young quarians who aspired to be recognised within the ranks of quarians everywhere, Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alerei, was openly weeping as he read the report. It honestly bore him to the soul that not only had they lost well over 6500 people in the battle over Duna, but also that dozens more had gone missing on the scout mission he sent out. Sometimes the curses of having command of a fleet where almost worth stepping down. But he was resolved, that no matter what he would persevere. He had to, for Tali.

Little Tali who had just got her first envirosuit. Who was currently under the care of his lifelong friend and fellow admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay. He opened a draw underneath his desk and retrieved a short, stubby, purple bottle. He could give in to the temptation. Alcohol was technically a luxury item on the fleet and most of it was saved for the few celebrations they had, but in this instance he felt it appropriate. Without warning, he heard several bangs on his door. He quickly put the tube away and opened the door to find a brown and red highlighted suit emblazoned with the symbol of the Admiralty board.

"What is it Gerrel, I'm kind of busy at the moment".

"The heavy fleet just beamed us on the QEC, they said they couldn't account for five bodies on the Quib-Quib".

Rael could not have jumped up quicker, and as attempted to drag himself out he almost tripped over the lip at the front of his quarters. Gerrel led him quickly through the winding brown corridors before he reached a darkened room, where a lone quarian was working. "Leuitenant I need you to patch me into the Neema's communications grid immediately". Without comment or question the lad did as he was told, and left both admirals to a flickering blue image of captain Rana'Taafor vas Heezay.

"Captain Rana you have something for us?".

_"Indeed admiral. We've scoured the system and found the empty hull of the Quib Quib. We managed to ascertain that the reactor took a hit and vented radiation throughout the ship before engaging an emergency shut down"._

Rael shivered, he did not want to think of the horror of acute radiation poisoning. Feeling your own body die cell by cell. "Continue Captain".

_"We did not however find 5 of the crew"._

Han turned to him, "We've cross-referenced the crew manifest and determined that Admiral Koris indeed may have escaped along with several of his crew. This includes Faunz'Reegar vas Quib Quib, Leah'Jimor nar Quib Quib, Daro'Xen vas Tonbay".

_So Jaeso's daughter survived, that's good._

"and Zife'Shaan vas Quib Quib".

Taafor nodded, "_We also found something very strange in the system. A massive unknown freighter, the size of a dreadnought. It had been destroyed, almost entirely by the turians, but judging by the scattering of the debris, it didn't even have a chance to ignite its engines properly, or it was too slow to do anything_".

He nodded, digesting all of this information. "Okay, so the Turians blew up a freighter, as bad as it sounds we may be able to use this against them".

"That's not the only thing Rael...". The tone in Han'Gerrels voice scared him. It was a tone he never thought he would hear from the elder admiral, Fear. "What is it?".

"We proceeded into the next system and found a turian wolfpack engaging an unknown cruiser. This thing... this thing was a juggernaught. It took dozens of mass accelerator shots and didn't die, shaped like a massive cylinder. It cut down four of them before finally the midship exploded. We believe its possible this ship recovered the survivors of the Quib-Quib".

"Or the Turians got ahold of them. What are the reports saying about the unknown cruiser".

A 3d model appeared showing the vessel. It was a good 0.6 kilometers long, shaped like a cylinder at he midsection. It widened at the end with four drive cones labelled as unknown make. Several rounded weapons bulks where extended in firing positions across the ship and it was covered in these bulbs which where apparently some sort of CIWS. The front possessed its own weapon which lacked a bulb but out-classed any of the other large bulbs.

"We can't find any remote matches on our databases. It lacks any element zero and was burning at 9.81 meters per second for the entire battle with no breaks until the midship exploded. The signature doesn't match anything in our manifests and we can't find any confirmed losses of ships with this exact shape".

The 3d model changed to a vid of the ship in action. "It's terrifying that's what it is", said Rael.

"If it doesn't match any known signatures and we can't guarantee its one of the known races of the galaxy, the Turians just provoked a race which could literally outgun them in every way and they'd be able to do null to stop them".

Silence reigned throughout the room four 30 seconds, before Han broke the silence. "But what if we could take advantage of the situation". Rael carefully regarded the man,

Han was never one to be subtle, he was a 'punch em in the head' kind of quarian. "What are you suggesting".

"So here's what we have. We know this new race is powerful, that's evident, but we don't know how powerful. For all we know that ship could be anything between a scout fighter, to their largest warship. We just don't know at this point".

"That's correct".

"And to them, they found a-".

"We don't know they found the Quib-Quib".

"But that freighter did!, tell him about the hole".

Captain Rana facepalmed (or helmet-palmed) before speaking, "The unknown freighter may well have cut through the hull of the Quib-Quib as we found unknown entries into the engineering quarters and the door to the emergency bay had been forced open from the outside. The hull had been cut through from the outside by some sort of tool".  
"So what if these aliens found Admiral Koris. Zaal would do what any quarian would do and thank them greatly. So these unknowns meet one alien race which is in trouble. They rescue them and are thanked immensely by the apparent leader before being attacked by another race with completely different ships". He was making a lot of assumptions here, Rael noticed, but the plan might just work.

"So you're suggesting we just charge into an unknown species space and hope they don't have the gun pointed at us".

"Pretty much".

He sighed, and braced against the railings. _We're trapped. We have a race of highly trained soldiers with the largest armada in the galaxy to one side, uncivilized space to another, uncharted space to another, and what could be an expansionist species with anything between a marginal to a stupidly massive military, who had just had one of their ships blown up by the already stated highly trained soldiers_. "Do it".

**Lighthouse Ceremony, Selatapaura, Kingdom of Erusea**  
Standing tall like a massive pillar of hope, humanities first space elevator was a beautiful sight to behold as it silently watched over the harbour city of Selatapaura. The six supports keeping the colossal windbreak gleamed in the midday sun and the windbreak extended up a good 2 and a half kilometers keeping the bottom half of the windbreak protected from the very worst elements. The actual elevator was a thin pole 2 meters in diameter extending up until the equivalent of geostationary orbit where the Selatapaura Orbital Dockyard stood tall as the primary shipbuilding capital for the Kingdom of Erusea. Ever since Erusea's capital Farbanti had been struck by the asteroid Ulysses (redirected by rogue Oseans attempting to halt the war) Selatapaura had been the primary industrial powerhouse of the nation.

Eruseas where proud and what remained of Farbanti had been rebuilt with the ghostly remains of empty skyscrapers in the submerged district. Many of the ruins where empty shells constructed shortly after the Ullysses impact event but had been abandoned when one of the fragments of Ulysses slammed into the ocean. The remains where surrounding a small-ish crater no larger than an arsenal bird filled with water. Farbanti was a remarkable place to visit, and one could still get tours through the flooded district.

At the present time, Princess Rosa Cossette D'elise, one of the most influential people in the galaxy was gazing in awe as the fireworks exploded in the sky near the elevator, sending out pillars of light as little yellow specks rained down. The other government officials and parliamentary staff let out a cheer of support and began clapping, and she heard the shouts of joy all the way from the streets. Everyone was out celebrating the Lighthouse Ceremony, the end of the fourth interstellar war. "Ahh princess a pleasure to see you again".

She turned to see the source of the voice, a young man with aubern hair and a white lab coat. "Dr Schroeder, I assumed you are missing out on the ceremony for a reason?".  
"Too much alcohol and drinking, I prefer the coolness of my lab personally. Mihaly extends his gratitude for the intelligence". She grimaced at how nonchalant he sounded as he said that. "How is our resident ace pilot?".

"He's doing slightly better. The drone program is complete and we've uploaded the latest data into Arsenal Birds Liberty and Justice. The data has already been tight-beamed to Oured where it'll be taken to Arcturus directly". She nodded. "And how's the wife and kids?".

"Pissed I'm not going to be on Belka to see the fireworks, but they'll get through it, I'm planning on visiting them in a month or so".

"And so you should Dr Schroeder, work is important, but not as important as the bonds between us", she quoted, remembering one of her dads famous quotes. "Of course. By the way there's a Kobol ambassador here, says he has urgent news from Arcturus".

She frowned and began pacing away from the balcony into a wide open ballroom where many where talking and chatting. "Thank you Doctor, now please go and see your family, before they steal a cruiser and fly here".

He left without comment, heading in a directly which was taking him to the elevator, though she doubted he would actually leave, choosing instead to ensure the new flight programs would be uploaded to the Alliance Drone defence network. While one could not beat human pilots at the helm, having a sizable force of MQ89, MQ101 and ADFX-11 drones helped to diversify the air forces.

While many saw the Alliance Star Navy as the guardians of liberty, should they ever fall, the air force would be a vital stop gap to provide support for the advanced but vulnerable ground units, or the archaic wet navy forces which planets fielded. Rosa bet if she looked really hard she could see the carrier Njord sitting in the bay.

As the lift slowly descended the floors to the meeting room where the ambassador was waiting, she began to dread the meeting. If a Kobol ambassador was visiting Erusea directly, it meant bad news. Nothing good had ever transpired from a Kobolese visiting Erusea, considering the last time it had directly led to war. As she entered, she noted the short shape of Ambassador Garman and relaxed slightly.

Out of all the Kobolese to visit, she preferred Garman the best. He was actually concerned with helping people, having been a doctor, rather than manipulating his way into power, and he was more of a friend than an ambassador. "Princess, I must say you're looking very fine today. How long did you spend getting ready for this event, three years?".

She rolled her eyes at the banter, "1 hour Doctor, how's that aging brain going. You forget how lifts work yet since I've come down all this way".

"Charming as ever".

"Bite me". If anyone had heard her speak like this they would most probably double-take on the spot that the normally very charismatic and ladylike young woman was speaking in such mannerisms. But both Garman and her where surprisingly good friends for an Erusean and a Kobolese.

"We have news and it isn't good, in fact I'm not even supposed to be here right now". That didn't inspire confidence, even less so when he produced a model of a vicious looking ship, with long swept wings which reminded her of the swept wings on an ADFX-11. "What is it?".

"Our deep space probes found several wolfpacks of these sneaking round Erusean space, not only that but I assume you've heard the news from Arcturus?".

"Not yet, you'll have to enlighten me", she said, taking a sip of some water.

"Just got sent out an hour ago. The _Canterbury_, an ice hauler near Shanxi was hit after answering an SOS. Then two PT boats die in a fiery inferno, and now a top of the line Zephyr class Cruiser, the _Donnager_ has completely disappeared after rescuing extraterrestrials".

She choked on her water, and began coughing heavily. "Please tell me you're joking".

"Nope, this is the real thing. First contact has happened, and that model there? Same as the ones which supposedly attacked the _Donnie_, we only got a limited transmission over the QEC from the _Donnager_ before she went completely dark".

"And you found them looking for us?".

"Yep, a wolfpack was poking around near Voslage, but if these aliens are anything like our kind, they'll ignore the small colonies and go straight for the throat which means-".

"They'll either target Caprica or Erusea. How much time do we have?".

"At our guess? Days probably, a week at the very most. Of course that's assuming they attack, they might just decide to float by". She copied the data over using Bluetooth, and handed the pad back. "Thank you Ambassador Garman, where are you off to now".

"Arcturus with the same data you just saw, whether we like it or not these Aliens aren't waiting around, and I'd rather have the full might of the Alliance ready before we start throwing punches".

She put her own pad away and waved him off. "Good luck ambassador, I'm afraid I must attend to other matters".

He nodded, before leaving the room without a second word. She put down her water and began to bring up her phone, intending to contact her closest military advisor with the data. If she went straight to her father he may start pointing fingers at Kobol, but Labarthe would be able to break the truth far better than she could.

Outside the whirring of an engine grew in noise, and she heard the sound of a rocket igniting, before the noise slowly lowered in volume. Proceeding through the doors, she called Labarthe immediately and was answered by an articulate voice, "General Labarthe here, what do you need princess?".

"I need to meet urgently General, there's something you desperately need to see".

"They'll be ready within the hour, what is it you need to discuss?".

"First contact".

**SSV _Donnager_, Zephyr class Cruiser under siege**  
A hail of gunfire burst through the door as the two special forces soldiers entered on their mechs. Immediately the mechs kicked into the air with a blast of air so strong it almost knocked Grissom over. The ghostly howl of their railguns in atmosphere shrieked through the hangar bay and several bright blue explosions materialised over areas where the most gunfire was coming from. The grenades rolled to either side of the door and exploded violently, cutting the walkway in two.

The hangar bay was a fairly spacious room surrounded by metal walkways and ladders. The shuttle Grissom had rode in only yesterday was decapitated on the floor, with its body torn apart to examine. The main space was mostly taken up by a long and cylindrical ship, very similar to its mothership. The main body was narrow at the front, widening slightly at the midsection, then narrowing again at the rear where a single drive cone sat ready to ignite. Six bulbous lumps around the midsection marked the point defence cannons, and the nose of the ship possessed two long rectangular hull pieces which where slightly indented, obviously the torpedo launchers.

"A fricken PT Boat? That's what we're making our grand escape in?".

Cowell, who at this moment was taking cover behind the outstretched wings of his mech, yelled, "Well they already captured our refitted PT boat in the other hangar bay so I apologise if this isn't up to your standards.

"Grissom grabbed one of the strange alien rifles from the floor, where a dead alien was. In the split second he looked, all he could see was a helmet which reminded him of a game he had played on the PlayStation 12 called Ratchet and Clank. Where the gleaming metal had two extended sections like horns which went back a few inches. The weapon itself was an ugly brown thing with several extensions on the nose and an odd, square barrel. He pointed the rifle in the vague direction of the unknown aliens firing and pulled the trigger.

The rifle spun upwards from the recoil as a somewhat tame sounding thunking noise sounded out. The lack of smoke and fire from the noise of the barrel was somewhat disconcerting as it felt like it hadn't done anything. "KORIS DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE ONE OF THESE THINGS!?".

"Point and pull the trigger!?", was the response, so he tried again, this time spotting several sparks erupting from the walls. Another explosion sounded out, and a single cannister trailing red smoke landed on the walkway connecting the PT Boat to the wall. "GO!", yelled Briggs, who was wrestling the rifle from a turian while his mech fired indiscriminately at the turians.

"ROCKET! BRIGGS WATCH OUT!". In slow motion, a rocket struck the wall section where Briggs was atop his mech, and the two disappeared in the smoke. When the fumes arose, Briggs was nowhere to be found, and the mech was writhing around on the ground, almost dead. Seeming to ignore the threat, the rifles shifted onto where Cowell was single-handedly taking out a full squad of turians, and he faltered under the heavy gunfire.

Grissom swore as a rocket narrowly missed the walkway and struck the upper levels of the hangar bay, and managed to jump the last few meters into the PT boat, before managing to grab and pull Jayne in. The Quarian who was being dragged was lagging behind along with Reegar who had also picked up a rifle and was firing randomly into the walls as he helped the younger quarian along.

The poor woman didn't get far though, and jerked as a single shot cracked into her visor. She collapsed straight onto the floor and didn't get back up. Reegar used all of his strength to haul her deceased body to the airlock, but took several shots to the leg as a result.

Cowell was last to enter and coughed up a heavy amount of blood before dragging himself through and locking the external door. "Someone needs to fly... Max burn, shred those fuckers".

Grissom sighed, "I'll grab controls, Jayne take manual control of the turrets. Strap in everyone, I'm puttin' us in a 7g burn to get the hell out of here". Jayne gained an eerie smile and plonked down into the gunnery section. "Reegar get your ass into the gunnery control chair and take control of turret four!".

"Copy that, how hard are we going to feel this burn?".

In answer, a sudden jerk drew everyone into their chairs. "Docking clamps released! Extending PDCs". A mechanical whir reverberated through the ship as six small stubby turrets extended from the exterior. They all rotated around a storm of metallic shards immediately began firing as the PDCs locked onto any heat signatures.

Grissom opened the nav card and immediately pulled the ship round to point at the now-open hangar bay doors. "Kickin in the burn!". The force was enormous, and the noise of the point defence cannons was drowned out by the sound of the thruster kicking into action.

A high pitched whining noise sounded through the hull as it blasted away. Cowell managed to just about raise a hand to his console. "Code 4 Golf Tango 59, immediate jump to nearest habitable system".

"_System Acknowledged, charging wormhole drive_".

**Bridge of the _SSV Donnager_**  
"Sir we lost the stealth torpedo boat, but _PT-A7H_ managed to escape, and they're ten seconds from wormhole activation". She sighed, before tapping a console on the wall.

"Initiate Self Destruct sequence, Yao, Theresa".

"Voice Command acknowledged, overcharging antimatter reserves in 3... 2... ".

As a small shape dematerialised from existence, the hull of the _Donnager_ along with the remaining turian frigates where consumed by a 200 megaton explosion as every gram of antimatter was annihilated in an instant. Incinerating the _Donnager_, incinerating the frigates. The explosion would be visible to any who where in the system and looked in the direction, with the remains of what once was titanium blasting out at low fractions of the speed of light.

Theresa Yao and the 3200 alive members of both the turians and the humans never felt the explosion.

But the galaxy would.

**Codex Entry: Kingdom of Erusea**  
Founded in 2345 by the surviving colony from the original seedship expansion, and originally the Republic of Erusea. The Kingdom of Erusea is a constitutional parliamentary government which is primarily led by the King and his family. While either the King or Queen may hold the highest rank, it is generally determined by a parliamentary vote, an odd form of government, but an effective one none-the-less. In 2398 the Republic of Erusea and the Osean Federation where engaged in a brutal ten year war between the two seedship founded colonies, resulting in many of the most advanced technologies.

The war was won by the Oseans, however by then a rogue terrorist nation in the Osean Federation called 'A Galaxy With No Borders' redirected a class 9 asteroid to erusea. In an attempt to shoot it down, the various planetary governments which where at the time split, attempted to build massive superweapons to shoot down the fragments. This includes the Stonehenge artillery circle, the Tyler Island Mass Driver and the Arkbird laser platforms which would become the base of the futuristic and powerful Arsenal Birds of the Atlantean Defence Initiative when they made first contact in 2478.

In 2515 the third interstellar war broke out, and the Kingdom of Erusea found themselves in another war with the Osean Federation, and the eventual negotiation of the war saw Erusea absorb many smaller planetary colonies including Belka, Voslage, Yuktobania and many others. In the fourth interstellar war, the Osean Federation oddly enough formed a defensive alliance with the Kingdom of Erusea, opting to negotiate with the eventual lighthouse agreement which saw the foundation of the Systems Alliance, and the ending of the last major war between humanity.

**Heard of someone complaining about the codex's. Once again you don't have to read them. But some people quite enjoy knowing what's what.**


	8. Patrol Torpedo Baot

**I have been informed that the full name for Zephyr is actually Zephyrus and I will now be conducting more research on the deities I assign to the Zephyrus class. Also do you know how fucking annoying wattpad is? Seriously! I'm a first year Software developer and I can figure out how to copy to clipboard but they can't? EMPLOY SOME PEOPLE. Phew, sorry got a little out of hand there. Anyway, I know someone was moaning that Holden recognised the distress signal far to easily. Well... A) Stop being a nitpick, B) I had planned for that and Holden isn't dead just because he was killed, not in terms of what he has done.**

* * *

_"__What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense_" - Napoleon I to Sir Robert Fulton.

* * *

**Farbanti Command Center, Kingdom of Erusea**  
"So you're telling me, that a diplomat from the United Colonies of Kobol actually came to Selatapaura and contacted you with classified information?", asked her Father, Georg D'elise. "You do realise how insane that sounds?".

"I know father. but you saw what Arcturus has said attacked the _Donnager_, if the Turians or whatever they are come here? And we aren't prepared? How long do you think our fleet will last against them. Hell even if we can get the _Galactica_ here from the Colonies, how long do you think a battleship will really last against a race who needs six frigates to destroy a cruiser".

He sat back down in his chair, "You do realise what will happen if the Colonies decide not to send the patrol fleet and we aren't prepared? We'll be slaughtered in the skies. Not even the Erusean defence fleet during the wars could hold of a race that powerful. We need to prepare for every eventuality".

The military leaders where silent as they considered the evidence, the same for her father. "Recall the patrol fleets. Demand the presence of the _Thunderchild_. Put the orbital defences on high alert. Evacuate the civilians from major city centers and bring Stonehenge online".

Her father stiffened, "How did you know about Stonehenge?".

"I have my sources father. But we need every asset if we want to hold out against these aliens". Admiral Halbert Dickens sighed, "The Arcturus military council will never send the fleet here. Not unless they actually have clear evidence we're under attack. I propose we listen to her".

"Me too. Better safe than sorry", said Labarthe.

Within moments, half of the leaders and military commanders in the room had agreed, and where calling for the measures to be put in their place. Georg was outwardly silent and stoic, but inwardly he was impressed with his daughters passion. She had managed to convince 18 of the most difficult-to-sway people like it was childs play. He had no illusions that she would lead the Kingdom of Erusea to victory in the future. _I wish you could see what our daughter has achieved Marie._

"Fine, raise alert level to red. And bring Arsenal Bird Liberty into an orbit around Farbanti. Admiral Halbert recall our contributions to the patrol fleets", he said, rising from his chair. "Someone get me the Arcturus Council and the President of the Twelve Colonies.

He had a council to convince, a battleship to commandeer and a planet to defend. Erusea wouldn't fall, no matter what.

* * *

**Arsenal Bird ****_Liberty_****, Stationed around International Space Elevator Lighthouse**  
Captain Joe Wiseman couldn't help but smirk as he entered the CiC of _Liberty_. The gleaming black walls and flooring shined in the morning sunlight as computer screens reflected off of the white ceiling. Little red lights on the walls kept the darker areas illuminated, which was everywhere on the bridge of an Arsenal Bird. Why waste structural integrity on windows?

His second in command, a family man nicknamed Jaeger by the rest of the crew greeted him. "Morning sir. I take it you want the report?".

"If you would please Jaeger. Anything new".

"Aside from the new drones arriving, a minor maintenance hiccup on our Tempest squadron, a small code issue with the laser and the new refits acting up nothing too bad". His smirk grew as he looked at a blueprint of the Arsenal Bird showing the new addition, what the brass called the Active Protection System. Using a new material discovered on Helheim, they had managed to create a quick-activation hard barrier.

The barrier would defend against anything, lasers and bullets. It was durable, capable of stopping a low yield nuclear weapon if possible, and could be deployed repeatedly thanks to the so-called element zero. The testing was due to take place in a week with the second Erusean Arsenal Bird on Erusea, _Justice_.

"Wonder when the brass are going to tell the Arcturus Council about the APS".

"All in due time Jaeger. You know how the brass are, they want to make sure it works. Oseans are already looking over the data and are presenting it in the next technology convention in march".

"But think of what we could do if the barrier could be made to last for hours on end, rather than the twelve seconds we get before needing to vent thermal energy".

He had to admit the temptation was there. Present designs of the APS showed it produced huge amounts of heat and as a result was unsuitable for military spacecraft, which already pushed the limits of radiation production onboard. The Asimov class was about as large as they could build before needing to place massive panels with huge radiator sections on warships. The early days of the first interstellar war saw these kinds of panels along with primitive railguns, and the easiest way to neutralise an enemy warship was to hit the panels. It was effectively the equivalent of making a human fight with a double sided gun.

"Would be awesome wouldn't it. How's Mihaly doing?".

"That old geezer doesn't know when to quit. He's still refusing to take a Wyvern and is running the patrol in his SU-57SM". Looks like the old pilot was doing well then. Mihaly was a veteran from the third interstellar war, a part of the Erusea air force who had engaged the Oseans in combat in his SU57SM. Even back then the newer SU63 was already entering service as the mainstay air superiority fighter, and he was flying in a generation seven fighter around gen nines.

"What a guy. You may return to your post Jaeger" The short but funny joker turned on his heel heading for the hangar bay while Wiseman took a sip of his coffee and looked over the live cam footage of the Arsenal Bird.

The 1.1 kilometer wide behemoth was sparkling in the sunlight over the sapphire blue sea-water of Gunther bay as it arced round steadily. The massive contra-rotating turbine blades gently thrummed through the ship and the massive control services barely buffeted in the Windstream. Small hatches attached to long bulges where closed, but during combat would open to fire missiles from hydraulic ejectors. The only parts controlled by humans where seamlessly blended into the hull and the hangar bay was unnoticeable against the rear. The only interruption in the uniformity of the flying wing was on the underside, where 120 triangular divots containing a smaller polygonal shape attached to a magnetic clamp where scattered about in groups of 30.  
The main armaments, a pair of massive lasers, where ugly and yet deadly in their placement, with four smaller lasers as gently disturbances in the wings. And he knew that occasional bulges in the stark white armour where actually its hidden PDCs which would extend in the same way that stealth fighters extended their missiles. Despite it being the size of a dreadnought, the birds had a radar cross-section of a heavy cruiser and where practically invisible in heavy storms as they blended seamlessly in, undetectable via laser or radar without some serious processing.

His attention was draw by a flashing alert on his desktop. "Hello what have we here?".

**Message from Farbanti command: D'elise, George**

"A message from the king himself?".

_Captain Wiseman_  
_Cole protocol is now considered active. Please move to condition two and move at haste to perform 10 kilometer radial orbit around Farbanti. APS will be modified using engineers brought onboard in next supply ship. For now keep constant patrol of 2 drones and a single fighter at minimum around the bird, and have all drones loaded for anti-landing ship combat._  
_I repeat, __Cole protocol__ is in effect._

"Well crap, I guess shore leave it cancelled".

* * *

**P7-AH, Seawolf class Patrol Torpedo Boat in unknown space**  
The FTL generators slowly whined down, and the noise within the cabin died to a steady silence. Grissom gave a sigh of relief when no-one showed up behind them. "I'm shutting down the reactor temporarily. Jayne what's the status on the weapons".

"We used a good 4% of our PDC rounds on the bastards as we escaped, but the artillery and the torpedoes are still good to go". Grissom thanked the lords they'd be able to take on a pirate fleet. Even the most lightly armed alliance warships where still eras ahead of the best civilian warships.

"Cowell where did you- Cowell?". The soldier wasn't moving, his eyes still and dead as they stared up at the deck. Blood seeping from several wounds was coagulating into floating red orbs which caught the red emergency lighting like little disco balls. The blue console to his back was covered in the messy substance, and Grissom saw that the fatal wound was a particularly nasty gash right over where the arteries connected to the heart. He wasn't a doctor, but that right there seemed like a pretty fatal wound, even with alliance-grade biological rejuvenation gel.

"Captain Grissom!".

"Koris you don't have to call me that anymore. My ship got atomised".

"You are still her captain are you not?".

"Well..." Damn he made a good point. "And at this point you've been more use than I have. But we have a problem".

Grissom brought up the system map from the ship archives on a screen in the center. "Looks like we jumped near Belka. That's a good thing, we can contact the Kingdom of Erusea. They'll have to believe us".

"They may not", said Jayne. Grissom knew exactly what that meant. "We're both UCNA. If we go there they'll lock us up in Roca Roja and forget we existed, conveniently bringing the existence of aliens to alliance command alone".

"I'm tryin' to be optimistic here Jayne. If we approach on a Low Approach Orbit and skim the atmosphere while broadcasting we might be able to contact the defending vessels".

Kaylee gave a shout from her console, "They already know we're here. The SSV _Scin'faxi_ and the SSV _Dying Light_ are both entering a formation with a pair of frigates and a wolfpack of corvettes. The frigate _Danube_ is steaming in the opposite direction and the frigate _Ile_ is holding back but is acting as a relay between the two".

"The turians won't know we survived so we've got to act fast and get a message to Alliance command".

"What's the communications gap between us and the fleet?".

"We're about 18 light minutes from the planet so we should be getting a reply in about 32 minutes. I can shave that down to 28 if I burn hard for the planet". He didn't even have to think before he gave the reply.

"Best not to. Burn on a trajectory towards the opposite end of the system and wait for a reply. If they see a Chinese PT Boat on a direct course for their planet they may not take to kindly".

"Captain that's not what I'm worrying about right now. I fear we may not have hours to have a conversation with the local authorities". Jayne shrugged.

"What do you mean?".

He looked around, "You don't have a galactic map of the local space do you?".

Grissom searched the archive and brought one up, it was only a basic 2d one for now, but it would have to do. Koris drew a star where the _Donnager_ had been engaged and where they where now.

"We jumped from here to here to escape the turians but I fear we may have only drew them to your colony world". He used his hands to widen the map till it encompassed a small section of the galaxy. Now that Grissom looked at it. Humanity controlled a tiny amount of space in the galaxy. Koris began to draw borders on the galactic map. A massive section in the galactic south which covered almost half the galaxy, a winding section in the galactic northwest , a smaller but still substantial patch in the northeast, and a patch which encompassed about a fifth of the largest patches, but a fair amount of free space as well. There was also a patch which covered the Perseus Veil nebula.

"This section here is Citadel space, this area is the Terminus systems, this is Geth space,". He said that with an air of apprehension, noted Grissom. "this is the Batarian Hegemony, and this here is Turian High Security space."

He then drew another line which surrounded Turian space but a few dozen light years further. "This is Turian fringe space and this... is where we are."

Crap.

Humanity sat slap bang in the middle of Turian fringe space. Even as Grissom tried to factor in the several thousand systems humanity had colonised and the hundreds more which had military starbases in humanity had a tiny patch of space. The Council had to have billions of billions of stars under their control. For ever system humanity had, they had about 80 ships to match. The council must have had billions to trillions of ships under their command, and yet the quarians only had 50,000? No something must have happened.

"The turians have about 800 permanent colonies, 300 of which are high security worlds with large orbital infrastructure and shipyards. Balka-".

"Belka", correct Grissom.

"Belka... is about 200 light years from Magna, a huge turian military colony which specialises in ship-building. We where 210 when we where attacked by a turian patrol, if they are searching for us using the mass relay network they may never find Belka as human space encompasses barely 8 known relays and I would estimate about a dozen unknown ones. But if they start using their FTL drives to scan individual systems, Belka is among the first to fall in the path".

"Oh fuck, we have to warn Erusea now. And all of human space. How the hell are we going to defend against this?".

"The Turians have about 28,000 warships, with 49 of them being of Dreadnought grade and 80 total in capital ships".

28000? How the hell do they defend their space with 28000 ships. But Koris said they only have a few hundred systems. How?".

"But why do they not colonise any star system they want. Why so little when they must have at least a few million stars in their space".  
Koris shrugged. "You get used to using the relay network. Why spend billions of credits to haul colony supplies on a 12 day journey between systems when you can spend the same amount to fund several colonies just a four hour hop from the nearest mass relay".

So the aliens where ignoring dozens of systems in favour of more easily reachable systems. Now it finally made sense to Grissom. If you could travel a few hours why worry about hitting every nearby system? Humanity wasn't connected externally to the relay network so it made sense that the Turians hadn't bothered. The nearest colony was Belka and it was still about 7 days direct from Magna. 6 if you used the relay 314 which connected directly to where his former captian Holden had taken the _Canterbury_.

Why would the turians be interested in developing the few systems without habitable planets when they could send a single mining ship with a few eezo rigs as Reegar had called them to strip the resources at a far cheaper cost. As opposed to investing in Morrigan Shelters and skyhooks with complex QEC relay drones and fueling stations.

"It seemed like the universe was playing a cruel trick on us when the Turians found us. A galactic coincidence that we where in the wrong place at the wrong time, only to be found by an unknown dreadnought of unknown design. But when you rescued my crew from the Quib-Quib we knew we had made a terrible mistake. We need to warn both your own government and the migrant fleet. We can't take on the migrant fleet alone, barely 3000 combat capable vessels above corvette and fighter class".,

"24000", said Jayne.

"What?", said Reegar.

"Humanity has 24000 combat capable warships including PT Boat class. Capital ship wise I'd say we have about 120 capital grade warships and 5 supercapitals".

"What are the specifications of your capital ships. How powerful are they". Grissom looked to Jayne who shrugged, "I'd probably say our flagships vary between _Asimov_ class Fleet Carriers and _Stormbreaker_ class Battleships".

He opened his omni-tool and brought up a vicious looking ship. It boasted four massive accelerator batteries, two in the wings and two in the main body. Its hull bristled with smaller gun batteries and a cargo bay large enough to fit a corvette was placed on the underbelly. "This is the pride of the turian navy, the _Peacekeeper_ class Siege Dreadnought. She's 1876 meters of bad news and oversized cannons. If this heads in the direction I think it will. Your race may well end up at war with the turians".

"So a big gun to compensate for a not so big race", said Jayne.

He tapped the wall and Koris transferred the ship over, before Jayne brought up a two dimensional image of an even more colossal ship. It looked very unspectacular. A slowly widening metal cylinder which occasionally extended in different ways and possessed only a few sets of large cannons as its armament. It was about 30% longer than the turian ship and dwarfed the comparatively tiny Turian dreadnought next to them. Immediately after he brought up two more ships, one about the same size as the turian dreadnought with sudden, sharp curves and sleek black surfaces, along with a rugged and brutal looking design hosting four massive cannons and dozens of smaller ones. "_Stormbreaker_, _Fury_ and _Asimov_ class."

Finally he brought up a smaller ship about the same length as the turian dreadnought. "Sovremenny class. I'm not sure how powerful these turians are but humanity may just be united for the first time since... well since ever".

"Well I can only hope we can warn your people in time. If we can't, then-".

"I have an idea", said Grissom. "But you ain't gonna like it".

* * *

**Arcturus Station, Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett**  
"-After engaging the _Donnager_, we believe Captain Yao engaged the ships antimatter self-destruct mechanism in order to hide our technology from them, however our salvage tugs have noted something odd", said Gaeta.

"Go ahead Mr Gaeta", said Hackett.

He brought up a chart on the wall. "We manoeuvred an orbital survey vessel to catch a glimpse of the battle, and we picked up the detonation of the _Donnager_, which was consistent with that of a _Zephyrus_ class Cruiser, however we picked up this signal shortly after".

A slight spike was shown on the graph, with a much longer build-up and a sudden cut-off. "This was at the same time as gravitational waves consistent with a jump from a small sized vessel. This means it may be possible that one of the PT Boats from the Donnager escaped".

"Where will they have gone Mr Gaeta?", asked Avasarala.

"The emergency coordinates at the time would have pointed to either Shanxi, or Belka".

The murmurs started up again and Hackett resisted the urge to run his hands through his hair. He swore this job would start greying him out sooner rather than later. Before anyone could say anything else, the doors behind him slid open and a young brunette in a dark black blouse and blazer entered followed by a taller and slightly older man with brown hair and a white uniform.

"Madam President, the representative for the colonial department for the Twelve Colonies has urgent information for the security council". That shut them up right away, and he beckoned for the man to enter.

"I'm not sure how to say this Mr?".

"Cottle, Sherman Cottle".

"Mr Sherman Cottle, but we are in the middle of a highly classified military meeting regarding matters which are not to your-".

"So I take it you don't want to know about the recon flotillas my escorts picked up nosing around Erusean space?". He froze, "What did you say?".

"You heard me, my corvette escorts picked up some strange IFFs scouting around Belka when we where refueling en-route. We've already notified the

Erusean princess of the matter and the Eruseans may well end up mobilizing immediately to combat the matter".

For the bazillianth time that day Udina interrupted, "Objection! This man has no proof to back up his claim! He's trying to garner support because the Kobolese are right next to the Eruseans".

"Shut the fuck up Udina, you haven't contributed a single useful opinion to this council meeting."

"But he presents a valid point", said Samuel. "We need proof before we consider reinforcing an area of space which may be ignored. We need our fleets now more than ever".

_Fuck he's right. We don't have the ships to defend everywhere at once._ "I'm going to have to agree with Representative Cox here, at most we can spare a single fleet, but we can't take the risk that somewhere even more vital comes under attack. God help us if we lose the Southampton Shipyards, or Arcturus Station, or if Sol itself comes under attack".

"What about the 8th fleet? The _Galactica_, _Riga_ and _Mogadishu_ would be effective force multipliers for the Farbanti Defence Fleet" asked Singleton.

"If this truly is a full scale attack what are the odds a single battleship, no matter its power can hold off the attack?", said Cree.

Roslin raised a hand, "I propose we send the _Galactica_ and its escorts to Farbanti. The Caprican Orbital Defence network is more than capable of holding off an enemy fleet for a short time before we can launch a counterattack".

That seemed to shut everyone up. "Its an interesting proposal", said Hackett, "But we need to be ready none-the-less. I propose we bring it to the parliament and have a vote on what to do about the aliens. We need to keep the issue under control and for now partial mobilisation seems like the best thing to do. If necessary we may have to move to a War Economy".

Roslin turned to Felix, "Mr Gaeta, please inform Admiral Adama to move his battlegroup to Erusea". The short man nodded before scurrying off. "As for the rest of us, we must inform the media of this in a way which does not spur panic. We do not mention the attack on the _Donnager_. Contain the spread of paranoia. At this current moment in time we are at war".

* * *

**Codex Entry: ****_Seawolf_**** class Patrol Torpedo Boat**  
Size: 68 meters in length

Dry Mass: 244 metric tons

Primary Armaments: 1 Spinal 220 millimeter smoothbore cannon

Missile Armaments: 2 Flechette Half-batteries, 2 Torpedo Tubes

Defensive Features: Re-entry bleed valves, Standard Armour plating, Standard ablative plating, 6 Retractable PDC mounts for 30 or 40 millimetre cannons (Normally 40mm)

Crew: 16 under normal circumstances but can be controlled remotely. carries at least 12 marines normally.

Powerplant: 2 K7 Antimatter Reactors

Propulsion: 1 'Plank' Type Frigate Grade Plasma Thruster fitted with afterburner and control momentum gyroscopes

Council Nickname and Classification: Super Shuttle (Heavy Corvette)  
Stealth Rating: 3 - QEC Communications, Smooth construction profile, effective radiation shielding, later variants have internal emissions syncs.

Auxiliary Craft Launchers: None

Utilities: High power ranging lasers and target locking system. Magnetic flechette tubes, comfortable crew quarters and onboard refrigerator. Aquaponics supplements bay.

* * *

**So the plot thickens. Grissom has a plan, Roslin seems a little less aggressive suddenly, the Galactica is headed for Erusea, leaving the Kobolese undefended, the question is who will fall under attack? The Kobolese or the Eruseans? Or neither? Maybe London finds itself under attack? Or an assault on Nova Nairobi? Or perhaps New York gets nuked? We shall see.**


	9. Ambush over Forsvar

"_To quote one of my home nations greatest Admirals, '__The right range for any ship of the Mediterranean fleet, from a battleship to a submarine, to engage an enemy with gunfire is POINT BLANK, AT WHICH RANGE EVEN A GUNNERY OFFICER CANNOT MISS', I will not hide simply because the Americans have a battlecruiser and we don't, they wont have one when I ram three rail-gun slugs up their ass" - _Admiral Jackson Singleton, Atlantean Home fleet, shortly before the Battle of Vancouver, Third World War

**_Forsvar_ Naval Fortress, Norwegion Ring Station in Erusean Transfer Corridor**

To the credit of Erusea, as the politicians argued on Arcturus, and the navy proceeded at a slow pace to finally meet what at this point was a quite obvious threat from extra-terrestrial forces, it would turn out that the tense relations caused between Erusea and North America would indeed prove a blessing. Following the surprise attack from the United Colonies of America during the latest interstellar war, the nation had refused to demilitarize it's borders. Keeping a variety of defense stations on standby. Thanks to it's close relations with Atlantis, part of the corridor system was controlled by both Erusea and the ADI.

The Mining stations were Atlantean owned, as anyone who looked at their sleek lines, sunken shape and white exterior could tell. The refinery's and extractors on the only planet were Erusean, as evidenced by the Erusean ensigned ships which hovered out of reach of it's toxic atmosphere. Lead by the battleship _Galactica_. An ageing and heavily armoured warship far more powerful than anything else in their arsenal.

Millions of Kilometers away, in the depths of the Inner belt, a rather unimpressive asteroid home to the powerful _Forsvar_ Naval Fortress, a platform that could strike with its powerful missile battery anywhere in the system and held two rail-guns normally reserved for capital ships. The fortress was owned and controlled by the Atlanteans, more specifically, an old earth nation called Norway operated it with a small garrison.

On this particularly silent night, with the station blocked from receiving any sunlight by the friendly interference of the large rocky planet as she slowly revolved. Something had woken Colonel Ørjan Bogen from his chambers, and as he continually read the increasingly worrying reports talking about magnetic flux, and the presence of someone else other than Galactica at ranges edging to the point of insanity, he grabbed a pair of old-fashioned binoculars and made his way to the observation deck, before ordering a pair of close range searchlights normally for docking assistance to begin scanning.

The metal composition of their asteroid produced a very stable magnetic field, especially when shielded from the star. With the field now changing and indicating a large metal object had entered range, with an electrostatic charge, someone was yanking his chain/

As the sweeping yellow beam rotated like a lighthouse, it was suddenly blocked from view. It swung past, before righting itself and revolving to point at the offending object, to reveal glinting metal, mainly a chrome coloured plate interspersed by red. They were so stupidly close range that the large missile batteries were useless.

At this range, Bogen could see the bulky frame, the underslung guns and the multitude of turrets. It was a warship. A very large one at that, a heavy cruiser judging by its size and makeup. He couldn't see anymore ships, but he could very well make this one out.

"Katherine!, Rekkevidde til ukjent!?". _Range to unknown?_

At no answer, he turned and addressed the Lieutenant directly. "Katherine?".

"Laser varierer sier 2400 meter Oberst". _Laser ranging says 2400 meters Colonel._

"Umulig! De kommer forbi navigasjonssignalet"._ Impossible, they're coming past the navigation beacon._

"Jeg har kontaktet _Galactica_, vi venter på klarering". _I've contacted Galactica, we're awaiting clearance._

The colonel made a risky, quick decision. These guys were definitely not friendly, or they would have announced themselves. To get this close and not get painted by radar or thermal imaging meant they were intentionally sneaking in, past where their long range weapons would be useful.

"Det er ingen tid, satt rail-pistol brast 1400 meter!". _There's no time, set rail-gun burst 1400 meters._

Immediately, his order was yelled to the gunners, despite there being an abundance of wireless communication forms easily more usable. But sometimes his crew preferred to yell. "1400 meter!".

"Burst satt til 1400 meter og synkende". _Burst set to 1400 meters and descending._

Immediately, a heavy mechanical sounding clunking as the enormous rail gun batteries rotated to fire on the heavy cruiser, at this range they would be able to fire one shot, maybe two.

"Avfyrer vi varselskudd oberst?". _Are we firing warning shots colonel?._

"Ingen advarsel, ingen nøling, dette er fiender!". _No warning, no hesitation, these are enemies._

The searchlight moved lower, highlighting the exposed underbelly of the craft. It's beam now a thin pinprick which could snap open in a moment to highlight the ship. Even as the gun finished its movement with a clunk, Bogen could hear someone in gun number 1 vomit, likely from the nausea of what he was about to do.

"Men oberst, hva om vi tar feil?". _But colonel, what if we're wrong._

He knew not to say anything, the chances of this starting Interstellar War IV were there, but he refused to acknowledge, providing an uplifting smile and nodding, "På min kommando". _On my command._

He pulled out his pocket watch, checking and making a note of the time. "Ild!".

"Pistol nummer 1, Ild!". A massive blast echoed out as the weighty tungsten slug ripped through the barrel, jolting the entire station and arching out. Within a couple of milliseconds it exploded and sent two dozen small tugsten needles ripping into the belly of the unknown ship. Even from here, Bogen could see the array of flames painting the ship and imagine the shock if the crew at the sudden blast. "Ild!".

"Pistol nummer 2, Ild!"

The second gun fired, the shot striking true and ripping through the right-side winglet, tearing it off and starting a blaze on its region aswell. Finally the unknown crew began to get over their shock, and the lasers on the outside began lighting up and blasting at the station, hitting its smaller gun batteries even as the raging inferno consumed the corridors likely full of oxygen.

Another explosion ripped through the decks, likely as the fire hit a reactor and caused it to detonate explosively, even as accurate fire from the ship began to tear through the smaller defence batteries and hangar bays. Bogen ordered the armored covers to be deployed, and the guns abandoned, as the massive ship angled its remaining accelerator and fired on gun number two, destroying it.

"Hvor er torpedoene Katherine?"

"Torpedo batteri skynd deg!", she yelled into her communicator. Normally at this range they would be useless, but in this specific scenario, the tubes aligned perfectly with the heavily damaged heavy cruiser which was close enough to spit at. "Ild!".

2 torpedoes lanced out from their respective tubes. Both ordinary. Both comparatively low yield. Both striking the already torn apart pieces of the ship. After both mammoth explosions, the ship itself disappeared in a mighty flash of light and hail of debris clunking into the station.

**Admiral Luke Souther, SSV _Galactica_**

Glinting in the sunlight, blasting forward as it floated in silence on the other side of the planet, the SSV _Galactica_ remained steadfast in its movements as it slowly moved into formation with the rest of the fleet group. Movement in space took hours if you were lucky, days normally. The _Galactica _was not a fast ship. The _Stormbreaker_ class battleship stretched as long as a mountain was tall, a smooth and slowly widening aluminium barrier shield to vaporize high velocity PDC and coil-gun rounds. Buried beneath the 200 millimeters of aluminium alloy was a titanium trauma shield almost 2 meters thick which could protect against nuclear blasts and even low-yield rail-gun rounds.

The rear section glowed a deep blue with the 12 massive capital grade plasma thrusters as they steadily kept the ship cruising at a comfortable 8.2 meters per second squared. Its RCS clusters were seamlessly integrated into the hull, only visible when occasional cones of steam kept the nose of the ship oriented at a direct prograde trajectory.

The _Stormbreaker_ class was the most powerful warship in humanities history. No other warship could simultaneously bombard a fleet into hot plasma, then close to CQB and finish the job with its four Typ-65 Warhammer Ultra-heavy rail-guns. Massive weapons which could hurl a forty ton tungsten slug at nearly 30,000 meters per second. A pair of 50 gigawatt near-ultra-violet lasers could melt a gunship into slag within minutes, or blast apart warships via ultra-accurate fire.

It's missile and torpedo launchers numbered in the hundreds, and could turn a habitable planet from a garden world into a nuclear wasteland within hours. The PDC coverage of its 40 and 30 millimeter turrets was total, able to shred medium sized cruisers within seconds while a set of light railguns and rapid-fire coil-guns could fill an orbital path with a wall of metal shards if necessary. Space was large and the odds of a single rail-gun slug hitting when ships entered torpedo range was null, however the Thunderchild could ignore this rule, comfortable in the fact that a 0.001% chance would eventually succeed if given enough time. And enough power to slag an asteroid into dust.

Somehow the ship breathed an aura of power and undefeatability, even when surrounded by dozens upon dozens of other warships. Gunships, Cruisers, Frigates, Missile Schooners, Corvette swarms. Even a pair of _Sovremenny_ class Carriers were dwarfed when compared to the _Galactica_. The vast distance of space gave the Kobolese battleship and by extension the Alliance a full few days before the aliens encroached on Erusea. If they did they would be within firing range of both megacities, Farbanti and Selatapaura. With half of the human nations still skeptical about whether the aliens would attack the Kingdom, they were refusing to dispatch the fast reaction fleet under Admiral Drescher, so for now they lacked a decisive ability to deploy drones, and would have to rely on the carriers _Minsk_ and _Belgrade_ to form a swarm of drones to intercept and damage the enemy fleet.

"Is Forsvar still transmitting their emergency code?".

"Negative, she cut off 12 seconds ago. We can see the enemy fleet now, they were using a large asteroid as cover while 3 of their ships snuck in to take out the station".

"1 minute till drone interception, the Viking is online".

"Prepare the flechettes first officer".

The Viking was the closest they had to a drone controller. Normally the drones would use pre-programmed trajectories to enter an intercept course with the hostile contacts. They would then switch to a dynamically calculated assault course, but on the trajectory they were on, they'd have less than thirty seconds of time in combat range. Since the enemy fleet was on a Low Approach Orbit the drones had entered an LAO in the complete opposite direction and would have a relative velocity of 15.6 kilometers per second. Considering that even the Crusadors had an accurate range of 400 kilometers, that would give them roughly 24 seconds of time on approach to actually hit them, and no chance of hitting them once they flew past as the relative velocity of the coil-guns was less than that of the orbit.

Before the alien fleet could recover, a swarm of torpedos, missiles and ISBMs would then appear out of no-where on the same trajectory and hopefully cause even worse damage as the alien ships seemed to have real difficulty with their PDC grid last time. Serves them right for using a directed energy weapon.

"30 seconds admiral". A live tactical map of the battle showed the two fleets as they approached. ET numbered at 5600 warships. The primary capitals of which seemed to be 8 warships in the center each stretching a full kilometer and a half in length. The flagship was only slightly longer, with a pair of long mass accelerators held underneath each of their winglets, which were an odd aesthetic choice for a starship.

The drones opened fire with orange streaks, as the glowing hot coil-cannon rounds curved round the orbit and a wall of tiny bomblets with conventional rockets strapped to them accelerated towards them. The Defenders opened up with their 30 millimeter cannons and supplemented the swarm by eliminating numerous of the enemies own drones, which seemed to lack the fast reaction of the human drones, but were far larger and more resilient. One-by-one, the enemies screening frigates lit up in balls of plasma as their foreguard was torn apart by a storm of little metallic rounds.

The drones suffered heavily from the attack though, and nearly half collided with the enemy fleet, or were destroyed by the laser based point defence grid, and the enemy drones. "Sir we have the first images about the alien drones".

The design appeared in front of him. A squat curved wedge with four guns on the lower half and a Perspex canopy on the upper. Two winglets extended from the midsection behind four of their odd, stubby engines. "Are they using organic pilots? What a bunch of idiots", laughed Shepard.

"Sir the enemy lost 87 of their frigate analogues in the attack, and one of their light cruisers was severely damaged".

The damage was less than hoped, and the defence fleet was still outnumbered eight to one. If Belka fell there was no reserve. This was all they had and Erusea would soon fall as well. "Copy that, what about the drones?".

"67% aren't responding, and all of the Crusadors fired their flechettes, so they're down to their 50 caliber cannons. The Defenders have about a third of their ammunition left, and the Samurai have a fifth of their coilgun ammo and their lasers are good for two more runs".

"Then have the Samurai move to the rear of the formation and keep the Crusaders in front. No sense in wasting drones which can be used to weaken the enemy fleet even more. What about the torpedoes?".

"Two minutes from entering range of the enemy, they've had to raise their orbit to 200 kilometers to match the enemy and will be intercepting the fleet in 150 seconds". Luke nodded, then clutched the command console. "Give me live feed from our nuclear ISBM". The screen switched to that of a visual feed from the missiles. In the distance, the cold blue and black of space was interspaced with thousands of little red dots which one-by-one had at least a pair of torpedoes lock on.

The ISBMs and Missiles would be reserved for the larger warships. The escort cruisers and dreadnoughts in particular, while the much smaller warships would face the far more numerous swarm of torpedoes. The majority possessed standard warheads, just a spot of antimatter to vaporize ionised hydrogen into a deadly cone of plasma. Several would explode with storms of white hot metal shrapnel. Several had much larger loads of antimatter or nuclear warheads. As the torpedoes activated their thrusters, the ISBMs and Missiles scattered, and used their RCS thrusters to hide from the tracking systems of the turian fleet.

Once they crossed the close-range threshold, their plasma thrusters ignited, curving them towards the fleet, and the few designated cluster bombs began individually scanning their targets, looking for weak-spots.

The GUARDIAN lasers on the fleet opened fire, and began vaporizing torpedoes by the dozen, not that it mattered, with thousands upon thousands of missiles. The first wave finally broke through the clumsy GUARDIAN grid of the first frigate, and the rest of the screen ships disappeared beneath the onslaught. What followed next was a complete breakdown of the perceived order within the fleet, as captains ignored protecting the larger warships in favor of just protecting their own ships. The four massive ISBMs fitted with pure antimatter were obviously prime targets and 2 were intercepted before they managed to strike their targets. One was intercepted by a fighter. Which no longer existed once it had been faced with a load of antimatter larger than its own mass. the other struck the lead dreadnought.

80 tonnes of antimatter was vaporized with the energy release of 1.8 Teratons of TNT, more than all of the nuclear weapons that had ever been detonated in the field of nuclear warfare on old earth. The explosion dwarfed the dreadnought, and consumed the entire vessel along with several escorting warships, as their hulls were washed from bow to stern in a thermal wave of vaporized metal from the dreadnought. The dreadnought itself was horribly damaged, with barely 2% of its decks remaining and a tiny stern section with heavy damage.

* * *

**Admiral Mutilius, Turian Dreadnought**

The ship was effectively destroyed, except the fact that 2 of the engines were still active, and the rough frame and keel of the ship was still barely functional. "Someone get me fucking status report, now!" Screamed Mutilius as the fleet struggled to recover from the blow. "Sir we suffered heavily from the attack. It seems they completely overwhelmed our point defence systems and used the screen of smaller missiles to cover for a large warhead which vaporized the _Palevan's Defender"._

"All hands prepare for immediate contact with the enemy fleet". She clutched the railing tightly. If she was commanding the fleet, she would use the confusion of a heavy torpedo attack to bring the main fleet group into engagement range and finish them off. "Have the frigates network their lasers and prepare to drown them in slugs. I don't want a single ship left".

* * *

**SSV _Galactica_, Admiral Luke Souther**

The minutes ticked by, the two fleets drawing ever closer together. Finally the communications array onboard the _Galactica_ pinged. "Sir we're receiving a hail from the Turian fleet in... English?".

"Onscreen".

The flickering image of a she-turian appeared, with a formal uniform which looked more like a set of armor than a captains garb. "_Am I speaking to the human fleet?_".

"This is admiral Luke Souther of the Systems alliance battleship _Galactica_. To whom am I speaking".

"_This is admiral Equba Mutilius of the Turian Star Navy. Please desist at this instant and allow marines to carry out an inspection for known fugitives_".

"Admiral, we aren't sure what this constitutes as in your own space, but attacking an Alliance warship in any human state would be considered a declaration of war. Now we are giving you one chance to retreat from human space without further infractions and await a diplomatic delegation. Should you continue in your actions we will open fire".

"_... Admiral Souther? If it were up to me I would do exactly as protocol dictates which is to withdraw to a neutral system, considering the current infractions of our fleets against your own, it might be the intelligent thing to do, however I am unfortunately not in command and must continue to follow orders_".

"You can't withdraw? Then I'm afraid I have no choice but to partake in any activities necessary to defend our worlds".

"_Then I can respect you admiral. May your people fight with hono-_". There was a pause, a crackle and what sounded like someone grabbing the microphone from the aliens hands. "_This is General Desolas Arterius of the turian hierarchy, you have broken multiple Citadel Council laws and are ordered to bring your ships about and allow boarding parties to secure them_".

The new voice was authoritative and sudden, cutting through Mutilius' voice with little care. "Mr Arterius, you are encroaching on sovereign human space. I assume you are Mutilius' superior and am warning you to back off from human space before someone starts shooting!".

The silence reigned on, and Luke was beginning to doubt if anyone was on the line, until the radio cut off without warning. "_Sir, the turian fleet is accelerating towards us_".

He sighed, for a moment it had looked like he might be able to stop the war without bloodshed. "All ships move to cruising acceleration and prepare all flechettes and cannons". The mechanical doors on countless ships in the human fleet opened to reveal areas bristling with little missiles, each the size of a knee. Ranging lasers from both sides engaged in a dance of death as they locked the targets.

The human fleet's PDC grid began tracking the turian fighters, which curved back around to cover their own ships, having been wrecked by the drone swarm.

"Sir we're 20 seconds from laser range". He smiled, "Fire at will". On the outer hull of the Thunderchild, four massive radiator arrays extended, blocking the sunlight from behind, and four bumps on the nose lit up. Immediately a huge amount of power was redirected, and the four radiators began glowing a bright orange. The lasers fired.

Half a second later, the Turians were not aware of the danger they were in until the hull of the dreadnought began to melt around them. The beam was invisible to the human eye. With no particles in-between laser and target the only sign of attack was the glow in the Thunderchild's radiators, and the large diameter of the turian ship which seemed to be exploding repeatedly.

"Timings?".

"12 seconds from range of their cannons".

"At 2 seconds retract the radiators and halt firing of the laser". Keeping the radiators extended when heading into battle was dangerous, and the laser would be hopelessly outmatched in firepower by the rail-guns and flechette storms".

He thanked the gods whomever was in charge of the Turian fleet seemed to be intent on making it as easy as possible for him to Boom'n'Zoom. It made more sense for the fleet to rotate and try to match their acceleration. Not only would this maximize time in weapons range, but it would mean they had a chance of striking the engines. As it currently stood, the enemy weapons would have a couple of shots, not great odds when their gunnery stations were barely competent.

All in an instant, both sides seemed to open fire at the same time. The human fleet looking almost like it was spraying luminous fluid at the enemy. Modern coil-guns squeezed projectiles to fire a couple of slugs per second while railguns fired individual shots. The rounds formed an endless stream making it hard to tell which side was firing. The Turian shots were almost invisible, so when the first dreadnought round tore through the heart of the gunship _Wendigo_ it came as a shock to the fleet. "Keep the fire up! Prepare PDCs!". All in an instant, the PDCs opened up with a wall of lead. For a brief moment, the total cost of firing the guns actually eclipsed the price of a frigate, as more and more lead was hurled in the enemy's general direction, while the GUARDIAN lasers did their best to stave off the flechettes which outnumbered the missiles 12 to 1.

2 ships, the _Clyde_ and the frigate Y6-7H physically clashed, so close was the combat. Their pieces spilling through each other like superheated magma striking molten metal. The resulting sprays would play havoc with both sides sensor's.

In an engagement which barely took 14 seconds, a massive amount of damage was inflicted on both sides. As Luke held on to the command railings, he felt something narrowly pass by his head, and watched as a tungsten slug no larger than a phone was lodged into the wall, still glowing from the heat. He thanked god spacesuits were mandatory in combat situations, as an engineer quickly grabbed a patch kit and began affixing it over the neat little hole. Luke thanked whatever deities he could imagine that the shell hadn't vaporized on impact and butchered the entire command deck.

On the other side, what few ships had been damaged were no longer in existence. The most heavily damaged but still operational ship was a cruiser which Luke decided would be called the _cheesegrater_ class, because of how easily the PDC rounds had penetrated it's armor and the fact he hadn't had a decent cheese sandwich in months. Unfortunately it seemed like the dreadnoughts had gotten away much better, their barriers absorbing the larger ship rail-gun rounds.

For now they would retreat to Erusea to re-arm with torpedoes and rounds. While the hasty might attempt another boom'n'zoom he didn't want to risk attacking without the cover of a torpedo volley. So for now it was a quick jaunt to Erusea to pick up more torpedoes.

And maybe some cheese, definitely cheese.

* * *

**_Stormbreaker_ class Battleship**

Size: 1720 meters

Dry Mass: 3,816,000 metric tons

Primary Armaments: 4 Type 65 Ultra-heavy Railguns, 6 turrets each with 3 FT-18 Super-Heavy Coilguns, 18 360 millimetre smoothbore battle cannons, 6 AES-280 Super-Heavy Railguns, 12 Zako-Sitara Heavy Railguns, 2 Composite X-Ray Lasers

Missile Armaments:12 ISBM Silos, 60 Missile launch tubes, 300 torpedo tubes, 1000 flechette batteries

Defensive Features: 200 retractable PDC mounts, titanium trauma plates, whipple shields, defense computer capable of tracking individual railgun slugs and utilizing its lasers as Point Defence Options at lower powers.

Crew: 36000 individuals with almost 3000 of them being marines, capacity for almost 12000 other soldiers.

Powerplant: Classified

Propulsion: 12 'Newton' Type Pion Thrusters

Council Classification: Thunder (Dreadnought)

Stealth Rating (Features): 9 (No stealth features)

Auxiliary Craft: 40 Shuttles, Capable of carrying 8 Corvettes, 16 PT Boats. Atmospheric Drop Pods. 2 Mining skiffs.

Utilities: Aquaponics Bays, Munitions factories and refineries, gunnery calculation computer, basic PDC defensive grid and high intensity ranging lasers. Forward facing 4 pion thrusters and carries a small particle accelerator for antimatter manufacturing, outer skin features retractable radiators and solar panels along with mining bay. Solar fuel scoop.


	10. QMFV Tonbay

**Quarian Recon Vessel ****_Tonbay_****, Patrol Fleet, Decommissioned Salarian ****_Type 31_**** Cruiser**

The ship suddenly slammed back into real-space, after the quick jump across thousands of light years. Almost immediately it's engines ignited, pushing it to a safe distance from the relay as it's sensors began looking through the entire system. Onboard, Shala'Raan vas _Tonbay_ kept her eyes constantly on the sensor stations, her mask oddly silent as she felt even if she breathed too loudly she'd draw an entire turian fleet group onto her location.

The _Tonbay_ had the best sensors in the fleet, capable of finding a single heat source in an entire system and getting it's location to the nearest meter. If there was a fleet hiding in the system, they'd find it, as soon as the corvette shuttle returned that was. The ship jerked slightly and the lights dimmed. "Hang on captain, one of the lower power cables was severed in the detachment. Engineering can patch it up now".

She swore underneath her helmet. The fleet's decrepit ships where falling apart faster than they could replace them. While on the surface the quarian fleet was a powerful entity at 50,000 ships, most of them could barely muster the energy to fire a guardian laser and it was unlikely that would change anytime soon. The Admiralty was desperately trying to cover up just how short on spare materials they where, doing things like scrapping fighters and shuttles to gain just a few more parts. She thanked the ancestors that one of the ships hadn't suffered a major decompression.

The attack over that damned habitable planet, had been a serious blow to the illusion that the fleet was invincible, instead it had exacerbated the issue and there where even some in the heavy fleet saying they should have stayed and fought rather than left. Too late now she supposed, though imagining putting a five centimeter wide slug through that bosh'tet general Arterius did give her a momentary smile.

"Anything on sensors?".

"Negative Admiral, Nothing so far". She nodded, "Keep me informed". The minutes ticked by as two more vessels dropped from FTL, their sensors painting the system. Several shuttles brushing by and doing closer range scans. Unknown to the quarian fleet, on the other side of the system, racing towards the system was another ship much like the Tonbay. A ship designed for small scouting missions and to protect its nation.

It dropped from FTL unspectacularly, unlike the sudden appearance of a wormhole which sent a shockwave of gravitational waves shooting out. A wormhole was a blackhole, a point of infinite gravity effectively, where the escape velocity was the speed of light, the only difference, was that the point of singularity was expanded to about 60 meters across, ensuring that an actual singularity didn't appear. And unlike entering a wormhole, which needed a fair amount of distance from the star, to ensure that the Morrigan effect (supercharged photons being washed around the rotating singularity instantly after it was created) didn't destroy the ship, when exiting there where no such limitations, as the ship didn't need to resist the wash of energy, in theory this meant one could exit a wormhole within atmosphere, provided you didn't mind a deafening crack as the energy exploded outwards and caused a sound akin to an asteroid.

Due to the massive distance between the ships, neither would actually see the other until the following day, however one of the quarian shuttles was much closer, and within thirty minutes, their sensors where blinded by a sudden blast of energy.

"Admiral! Shuttle 3 is reporting their sensors just got blinded by an energy pulse".

"Are they still in one piece?".

"Yes they are, they've sent coordinates for the sector of space the blast came from, and...",

"And what Lieutenant? It looks like a... a..."

"A what!?".

"A wormhole". The entire bridge crew was stunned to silence. The realization washing over them. "Wormholes aren't a natural phenomenon that just appears out of nowhere, they're unstable to the point of annihilation". It was basic college level physics that wormholes would destroy themselves as soon as they existed due to the incredible earthquake on the spacetime continuum that was created. They interacted with all eleven dimensions and really hated that they existed.

"Scan again, if it's a wormhole someone must have left some sign that they where there!".

The shuttle itself moved closer, sending out an active radar ping that easily reflected off of the short, cigar shaped ship.

* * *

**_Seawolf_ class PT Boat, John Grissom, Nordland**

The PDCs where extended, the torpedoes where loaded, the spinal cannon readied and the ship's plasma drive heated up and ready to dodge if necessary. With smaller ships, the limitations to how quickly a ship could dodge where that of its crew. With the correct training, drugs and conditioning you could pull a 40g blast for a second, likely with damage to the crew.

"One of the shuttles area headed this way now. What's the plan Koris?".

"We need to get within communications range of the _Tonbay_, can you hail the shuttle and reveal ourselves?".

"Roger that!", said Kaylee, who was at this time the closest they had to a helmsman. "Channels open, we have a line of communication to the shuttle".

"Quarian Shuttle, this is Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Q- vas Neda. Do not fire on this ship! I repeat, do not open fire!".

"_Wha Admiral Koris? You're alive?_". The quarian crew onscreen looked beyond shocked, at least their body language (which was decisively human) seemed to indicate. "_P.. Please deliver clearance passcode_".

"On tides of light and waves of dark. I travel far and wide. But day that comes in my future so I will return to where I began".

"_It's him! He's okay! Who are the aliens? Are they the ones from the ship that exploded?_".

Jayne shrugged as Koris grabbed the microphone. "Yes they are. They saved mine and my crews life. Is the fleet here?".

"_Not the entire fleet, just the Tonbay. But we can take you to Admiral Raan._"

Koris looked at Grissom, as if seeking approval. Who nodded. "Your people Admiral".

"That would be ideal. Though transfer might be difficult".

Jayne spoke up. "You guys and the Engineer can take a spacesuit over".

"Where is the Kaylee?".

"She's tending to that traumatized one downstairs, she's still not quite... recovered". Koris nodded. "Our suits are vacuum capable so we can spacewalk to the airlock".

"_I'll contact Admiral Raan now. But... there's something you should know. Admiral Zorah is currently scouring systems looking for you guys, he's taken the Alerei and a couple of frigates to the system_".

John's eyes widened and he swore under his breath. "That might take them straight to Atlantean space. If they get within range of Atlantea. They might open fire first and ask questions later".

Koris turned. "You didn't tell us that!".

"I said the Atlanteans where trigger happy. I lost count of the amount of times they intercepted my crew with fighters when we so much as breathed near their stations".

"Okay, what about the other way?".

"That's the more obvious way and is connected to the relay network, but that's likely where the Turians went".

"Bosh'tets! We need to dock quickly".

Grissom nodded, "Jayne! Set a course for the second relay! Max you can get us without stroking us out".

**Stonehenge Defence Installation, Somewhere in Rojan desert, Erusea**

Rosa D'elise was exhausted. With the loss of contact from the Norwegian station in the transfer corridor and the sudden appearance of a damaged and recovering fleet she had been shocked and surprised at the speed at which Belka fell. The garrison of 500 soldiers barely put up a fight and had surrendered almost immediately, not that she blamed them.

But on hearing the reports that the Turians had taken thousands of civilians and military personnel alike prisoner, she wanted nothing more than these damn xeno's to arrive and get turned into relativistic dust by the orbital gun network. As a capital world, Erusea was perhaps less well defended than say, Old Earth, Gargantua or others, as she had almost entirely relied on the Erusean fleet for protection. However the formation of the alliance meant that the nations had to evenly split their fleets, and the sudden drafting of the Alliance military saw much of the Royal Erusean Navy transferred to the alliance.

On the other side, now she could at least guarantee that the entire weight of the Alliance would be brought down on these aliens when or if word got out about the invasion, but they where cut off. The Erusea QER connected to the Forsvar naval QER which had been knocked out before they could try and move it. As the holographic display of the system came up, she noted the distance between the fleet and Erusea. Why oh why did Erusea have to be on the cold side of the habitable zone.

It made the travel window between the star and the planet in the realm of hours. "Another one, that's three capital ships now. We're definitely outgunned".

Georg massaged his head, "We knew that Admiral. Now can will their route take them through the minefield?".

"Not if burn straight for us. We placed the minefield to eliminate the possibility of a high speed orbital attack that keeps them sheltered from the rail-guns".

"Then you're clear to engage. Those damn slugs are pointed at the center of the galaxy and I couldn't care less if they missed or hit. So can you please start firing". He nodded, before bringing up his phone.

"Rosa are you sure you don't want to head to the mountain bunkers? I'd feel much safer if-".

"No father, I'm staying to help coordinate evacuation efforts. Now if you'll excuse me". She turned on her heel, heading for the communications center, where the members of his inner circle where trying in vain to get people out of the cities. But they hadn't the best transport system, and at this rate only half of the major cities would be evacuated before the Turians could reach the planet.

"How many rounds can we put through the Turians if they burn at full assuming average capital ship accelerations?".

"We can empty the guns. But they won't be completely accurate until they reach about a million kilometers. I'll alert the fleet to try and oppose the orbit, they'll have to skip loading missiles though. There's not enough time".

"Are they headed for the station?".

"No, they're still gathering. That makes four heavy cruisers, 80 light cruisers, 400 destroyer-frigates and 200 corvettes".

"What's the plan for the guns?".

"We'll keep them silent until about 10 million kilometers, that gives us a period where we might be able to score some surprise hits".

"Can we try to work out which ships are the troop transports?".

"Not at this range, and even so most of these are already known ships. They're designed primarily for multi-role. They're all basically the same ship but bigger".

"Any weaknesses you can exploit?".

"Focusing our attack in one specific area overwhelm their defenses. It's not going to be very effective in a specific field so we can either get to ultra-close range with the cannons and PDCs, or missiles and drones from range".

"That only really leaves close range since they used the drones up. Have you considered trying to hide the orbital guns until point blank?".

"They're too easy to spot. The crew signitures are enough and they're in the light so they can easily be identified, hell they look like cannons. We'll use the cannons to soften up the capital ships. Intel reckons if we're careful with our shots we can gut one and get it down to three". A beep from the console. "Sorry, five ships. Two more just jumped in. We're now up to six capitals and 940 smaller ships".

"That's not a fleet! That's a motherfucking Armada".

"And we're screwed, but we'll try our best to hold them off".

**Codex Entry: Tactical Combat in Space**

Orbital Intercepts: During the very first days of space based combat, before the advent of high accuracy hive-mind torpedoes controlled by algorithms, many of the battles where fought at extremely close range. This required careful planning, and the only way to catch a ship with a greater acceleration was to out-smart your opponent. The limitations in engine power, meant that when two ships did proceed to engage each other. There would often be a long period as both fleets neared. When drawn onto an orbit, the attacking ship would raise it's apoapsis to match that of it's target, and engage them as they neared, matching the relative velocity to increase the length of time in combat zone. Rail and Coil guns where still very crude at this point and lacked quick-cooling radiators and therefore took valuable time to cool down.

Stalemate Missile Attacks: During the first Stellar war, with missiles still very new, and PDCs not yet advanced enough to engage them, the missile would almost always got through. In this case, it wasn't uncommon for two fleet groups to completely annihilate each other and end up with both sides bloodied. These stalemates lead to generation II spaceships often being built as cheaply as possible with next to no close range guns. What use was a CQB weapon if your opponents where plasma before you could do anything. In this case and in generation III spacecraft we can see:

Orbital Flybys: Flybys are very similar to intercepts, however unlike the former, they do not intend on keeping the target in target range, and are fairly controllable methods. They are described, by an initial trading of missile or drone fire. (Which resulted in many stalemates until PDCs began to be used more) followed by the attacking fleet burning to cross the orbit of the other side. These are usually slower than the average boom'n'zoom and are more commonly used when one side has a range advantage the attackers do not wish to be exploited by, however it still relys on a degree of accuracy.

Boom'n'Zoom: Scientifically speaking, a BNZ is the exact same as an Orbital Flyby, characterised by a very quick attack that has a massive relative velocity difference between both sides. However unlike Orbital Flybys, the attackers do not attempt to slow down once in the correct range, instead it is designed entirely as a surprise attack, and is designed to minimise the defender's chance of reacting to the target. The tactic was not commonly used until the African Union began using stealth ships to attack Russian battleships (who at the time where one of the larger powers). In many cases, the stealth ships would be able to damage the battleships forcing a retreat, without taking damage themselves, which is the primary reason why the Second Stellar war was a largely stalemated war, ending in no clear victors.


End file.
